The Star That Never Sleeps  

Through the north window my chamber glows,  
A star with uncanny light bestows.  
Through long hellish hours of blackness and fear,  
In the autumn of the year, when winds jeer,  
From the north they curse and whine,  
Through red-leaved trees, the swamp’s grim design,  
Where mutterings in shadows creep,  
Under the horned moon's baleful sweep.  
 
I sit, by the casement's cold embrace,  
And watch the star that holds its place.  
Cassiopeia reels from her heights so bright,  
Charles’ Wain lumbers through the night.  
Swamp trees sway in vapors soaked,  
Night-wind's breath, a secret cloaked.  
And Arcturus winks from the cemetery’s crest,  
While Coma Berenices shimmers to the east, suppressed.  
 
Yet the Pole Star leers, unmoving, still,  
An insane eye over the low hill.  
It winks, monstrous, a message confined,  
Forgotten words, yet intertwined in my mind.  
When clouds obscure, and the heavens fold,  
Only then can I find sleep’s hold.  
 
Oh, the night of the great Aurora's fire,  
When daemon-light danced in spectral attire.  
Its beams died down, and clouds unrolled,  
At last, I slept, my dreams consoled.  
But under a waning moon's cruel beam,  
I saw the city that haunted my dream.  
 
Still it lay, somnolent, vast,  
On a plateau carved by an aeon's past.  
Its ghastly marble shone in gloom,  
With domes and spires, a spectral tomb.  
Grave, bearded men on pillars stared,  
Carven visages, their secrets bared.  
And in the streets, where silence reigned,  
Forms moved, their speech unchained.  
 
Under Aldebaran’s ruddy glow,  
The city stirred with wisdom’s flow.  
Yet no day broke this eternal night,  
Only the moon and the star's cursed light.  
When Aldebaran crawled its weary path,  
Silence fell, like an ancient wrath.  
 
In cloudy slumber, the vision returned,  
Each glimpse of the city, my soul it burned.  
By the Pole Star's leer, my purpose churned,  
To find my place, where wisdom yearned.  
“This is no dream,” I told my heart,  
“Why else should my soul be torn apart?  
What proof can bind my waking plight,  
To the house of stone beneath its light?”  
 
In the square of statues, where wisdom flowed,  
I felt my form; no longer a shadow.  
Alos, my friend, in valiant speech,  
Rallied the men their heights to breach.  
The Inutos came with a fiendish tide,  
From the unknown west, no laws to guide.  
 
Tall and grey-eyed, our people stood,  
Bound by honor, not by blood.  
To the tower of Thapnen, my place was assigned,  
To watch the pass with an unyielding mind.  
With fire to signal the coming dread,  
To save Olathoë from its fateful bed.  
 
Alone in the tower, I kept my post,  
The horned moon red, a sinister ghost.  
The Pole Star glittered, alive with malice,  
Its whispers poured from a celestial chalice:  
 
“Slumber, watcher, till the spheres  
Six and twenty thousand years  
Have revolv'd, and I return  
To the spot where now I burn.  
Other stars anon shall rise,  
To the axis of the skies;  
Stars that soothe and stars that bless,  
With a sweet forgetfulness.  
Only when my round is o’er,  
Shall the past disturb thy door.”  
 
The rhythm ensnared, my mind succumbed,  
The fire unlit, the signal undone.  
In a dream I fell, to a swamp’s cursed hold,  
Where trees swayed black, and the star burned cold.  
Dream-creatures mocked my frantic plea,  
“You are not dreaming, this is reality.”  
 
They laughed as the Inutos crept through the pass,  
And my city fell like shattered glass.  
Alos betrayed, my oath undone,  
The marble city lost, its battles unwon.  
But they whispered truths more chilling still,  
“No land of Lomar crowns this hill.  
 
Where the Pole Star shines and Aldebaran glows,  
There lies only ice and Esquimaux.  
Your city, your people, are dreams confined,  
Phantoms wrought by a restless mind.”  
 
And yet, as I writhe in this guilty despair,  
The Pole Star leers with its monstrous glare.  
An insane eye, its message lost,  
A sentinel bound by an ancient cost.  
Am I dreaming, or awake in pain?  
The marble city calls, again and again.  
But the black vault mocks, its laughter stark,  
As I drift forever in this star-lit dark.