There are no stars in heaven, So doth the day declare; Only in times of darkness Are we sure that the stars are there. There are no dreams whatever — Light would our needs disown ; But the night lifts our faces upward And we build on the dream alone. Swear by the night forever; Reach for a faultless land ; You may touch what the blinding brightness Refuses to understand.
Daylight, the speaker says, makes it seem as though there are no stars at all. They only reveal themselves once the sky goes dark, and the poem uses that simple fact to make a bigger point: some things can only be seen when the glare is gone. The same goes for dreams. Bright, practical daylight has no use for them, but night turns our faces upward and gives us room to build something out of imagination alone.
The speaker sounds calm but quietly urgent. The closing lines work almost like advice, urging the reader to "swear by the night" and reach for a "faultless land," a place of ideals that daytime reasoning can't make sense of. Brightness here is a little blinding, too certain of itself to notice what's subtle. The mood is hushed and hopeful, a gentle defense of darkness, doubt, and dreaming as the places where wonder actually lives.