Last Poems (Housman)/Astronomy

by Alfred Edward Housman

XVII
Astronomy

The Wain upon the northern steep
 Descends and lifts away.
Oh I will sit me down and weep
 For bones in Africa.

For pay and medals, name and rank,
 Things that he has not found,
He hove the Cross to heaven and sank
 The pole-star underground.

And now he does not even see
 Signs of the nadir roll
At night over the ground where he
 Is buried with the pole.