Mahomed Akram's Appeal To The Stars

A poem by Laurence Hope (Adela Florence Cory Nicolson)

Oh, Silver Stars that shine on what I love,
Touch the soft hair and sparkle in the eyes, -
Send, from your calm serenity above,
Sleep to whom, sleepless, here, despairing lies.

Broken, forlorn, upon the Desert sand
That sucks these tears, and utterly abased,
Looking across the lonely, level land,
With thoughts more desolate than any waste.

Planets that shine on what I so adore,
Now thrown, the hour is late, in careless rest,
Protect that sleep, which I may watch no more,
I, the cast out, dismissed and dispossessed.

Far in the hillside camp, in slumber lies
What my worn eyes worship but never see.
Happier Stars! your myriad silver eyes
Feast on the quiet face denied to me.

Loved with a love beyond all words or sense,
Lost with a grief beyond the saltest tear,
So lovely, so removed, remote, and hence
So doubly and so desperately dear!

Stars! from your skies so purple and so calm,
That through the centuries your secrets keep,
Send to this worn-out brain some Occult Balm,
Send me, for many nights so sleepless, sleep.

And ere the sunshine of the Desert jars
My sense with sorrow and another day,
Through your soft Magic, oh, my Silver Stars!
Turn sleep to Death in some mysterious way.