The Old Pole Star

by Edith Wharton

　　Man tethered Change to his fixed star, and said:

　　"The elder races, that long since are dead,

　　Marched by that light; it swerves not from its base

　　Though all the worlds about it wax and fade."

　　When Egypt saw it, fast in reeling spheres,

　　Her Pyramids shaft-centred on its ray

　　She reared and said: "Long as this star holds sway

　　In uninvaded ether, shall the years

　　Revere my monuments--" and went her way.

　　The Pyramids abide; but through the shaft

　　That held the polar pivot, eye to eye,

　　Look now--blank nothingness! As though Change laughed

　　At man's presumption and his puny craft,

　　The star has slipped its leash and roams the sky.

　　Yet could the immemorial piles be swung

　　A skyey hair's-breadth from their rooted base,

　　Back to the central anchorage of space,

　　Ah, then again, as when the race was young,

　　Should they behold the beacon of the race!

　　Of old, men said: "The Truth is there: we rear

　　Our faith full-centred on it. It was known

　　Thus of the elders who foreran us here,

　　Mapped out its circuit in the shifting sphere,

　　And found it, 'mid mutation, fixed alone."

　　Change laughs again, again the sky is cold,

　　And down that fissure now no star-beam glides.

　　Yet they whose sweep of vision grows not old

　　Still at the central point of space behold

　　Another pole-star: for the Truth abides.