"The Novices of Heaven"

The Novices of Heaven

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 Ella Higginson's When the Birds Go North Again (1898).