Symbol Analysis
It's a bird. It's a plane. No wait—yeah, it's just bird. It's hard to see with all this night going on.
The poem begins and ends with the night sky. In lines 1-3, the speaker muses on the lack of light and clouds present. That's our first indication that this poem takes place largely at night. But it's less about what isn't there than what is. Lines 8 and 11 mention the dim stars that overlook the scene.
These stars, and the other "shifting elements" in lines 27-28, are of utmost importance to the speaker. He wishes that poets and youths would spend more time communing with them. Though they might not appreciate the night sky, the birds do. In line 80, for example, the birds in the grove burst into song when the moon emerges from beneath clouds.
As the poem ends, this revelry in celestial sights continues, when the speaker recalls how his son was comforted by seeing the moon. He hopes that his son will always associate the night sky with good things.