Behold how God has sown the stars,
In the blue fields of the sky;
When purple dusk comes stilly on,
How soft and thick they lie
Within the lower deeps―the earth
To crown and beautify!
On nights like this the angels steal
Out of the jewelled gate,
Upon the porches wrought of pearl,
And look and lean and wait,
With tender eyes turned down to earth,
Till the hour grows sweet and late.
With soft arms lightly pressed upon
The outer balustrade,
Whose every rail and baluster
Of fire-opal is made,
Their misty shadows wavering
On the amethyst arcade,
They lean and look in silence there,
Above the spirit sea
Up which the souls must rise from earth,
When God shall set them free;
They watch the silver hours go by,
And wait so patiently!
These are the novices of heaven,
Whose eyes still earthward turn;
Whose souls, unused to higher life,
Still ever earthward yearn;
Whose hearts, unable to forget,
Still for the earth-hearts burn.
And so on nights like this they steal
While the older angels sleep,
Out to the opal balustrade,
And longing vigils keep;
And when the lights go out on earth
They bow their heads and weep.
“The Novices of Heaven” as it appears in Higginson’s When the Birds Go North Again (1898).