The speaker can barely contain his excitement, urging us to look up at the stars. They aren’t just distant suns; he sees them as “fire-folk,” glittering towns, and something like diamonds or elves’ eyes peeping from dark woods. The language fizzes with invented words (“quickgold”) and sudden, surprising comparisons—wind-beaten whitebeam trees flaring, doves scattering like flakes. All this dazzling beauty, he blurts out, is up for grabs: “it is all a purchase, all is a prize.” The mood shifts from breathless wonder to urgent invitation. What could possibly pay for it? Not money, but “Prayer, patience, aims, vows.” Then the whole starry scene transforms into a farmyard at harvest. The night sky becomes a barn, the stars are piled sheaves of grain, and a bright fence—the horizon’s edge, perhaps—encloses a holy household: Christ, his mother, and all the saints at home. It’s ecstatic and deeply reverent, a vision of the universe as a place where the sacred is stored, safe and waiting.
The Starlight Night — Summary
Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies! O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air! The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there! Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves'-eyes! The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies! Wind-beat whitebeam! airy abeles set on a flare! Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!— Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize. Buy then! bid then!—What?—Prayer, patience, aims, vows. Look, look: a May-mess, like on orchard boughs! Look! March-bloom, like on mealed-with-yellow sallows! These are indeed the barn; withindoors house The shocks. This piece-bright paling shuts the spouse Christ home, Christ and his mother and all his hallows.