"The Star"

The Star

I look across the waste of night; 

         My eyes swim deep in tears; for there,

Plain to my sight, tho’ bleak and low,
         Lies the deep valley of Despair.

Must I, too, walk those bitter miles
         To that dark mire rimmed round with stones?
Must I leave bloodprints on the way?
         And lay my bones with those bleaching bones?

I turn and lift my praying eyes

         To the far, sweet deeps of heliotrope,
And lo! a star is coming up—
         The beautiful God-sent star of Hope.

"The Star" as it appears in Ella Higginson's The Voice of April-Land and Other Poems (1903).

"The Star" as it appears in Ella Higginson's Four-Leaf Clover (1901).