| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | On the Beach at Night | | By Walt Whitman (1819–1892) |
| | I ON the beach, at night, | |
| Stands a child, with her father, | |
| Watching the east, the autumn sky. | |
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| Up through the darkness, | |
| While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, | 5 |
| Lower, sullen and fast, athwart and down the sky, | |
| Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, | |
| Ascends, large and calm, the lord-star Jupiter; | |
| And nigh at hand, only a very little above, | |
| Swim the delicate brothers, the Pleiades. | 10 |
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II. From the beach, the child, holding the hand of her father, | |
| Those burial-clouds that lower, victorious, soon to devour all, | |
| Watching, silently weeps. | |
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| Weep not, child, | |
| Weep not, my darling, | 15 |
| With these kisses let me remove your tears; | |
| The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, | |
| They shall not long possess the sky—shall devour the stars only in apparition: | |
| Jupiter shall emerge—be patient—watch again another night—the Pleiades shall emerge, | |
| They are immortal—all those stars, both silvery and golden, shall shine out again, | 20 |
| The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again—they endure; | |
| The vast immortal suns, and the long-enduring pensive moons, shall again shine. | |
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III Then, dearest child, mournest thou only for Jupiter? | |
| Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? | |
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| Something there is | 25 |
| (With my lips soothing thee, adding, I whisper, | |
| I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) | |
| Something there is more immortal even than the stars, | |
| (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) | |
| Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter, | 30 |
| Longer than sun, or any revolving satellite, | |
| Or the radiant brothers, the Pleiades. | | | | |
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