Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WHAT THE STARS SANG IN THE DESERT, by GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WHAT THE STARS SANG IN THE DESERT, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I woke in the desert rude
Last Line: The radiant silence hung.
Subject(s): Deserts; Food & Eating; Stars; Universe


I WOKE in the desert rude
O'erhung by the star-sweet sky,
And ever the radiant multitude
In the silence drew more nigh,
As if on my eyes to brood,
And inward glory nurse,
And out of the heart of the universe
Soared forth my singing cry:

"We are young -- our song up-springing
The crystal blue along,
Creation's morning singing, --
It was but children-song,
Melodiously ringing,
Mysteriously forewarning
The realm beyond the morning
We infinitely throng.

"We sit in our burning spheres
Illimitably hung;
By the speed of light we measure the years
On purple ether flung;
Without a shadow time appears,
A calendar of echoing lights
That flame and dusk from depths and heights,
And all our years are young.

"We are borne through darkness streaming
Wherein our glory glides;
We dower the deep with the beaming
Where prophecy resides;
Forevermore we are dreaming,
Still in the springtime blossom
Of thoughts that light our bosom
And beat our glowing sides.

"Wide the abyss; we span it,
Who showering a bright spark came,
And forever we smite it and fan it
Forth from the forging flame, --
Life, flower of the planet,
Flower of the fire, supernal,
Burning, blooming, eternal, --
A million names are his name.

"We tremble; we thrill heaven's ocean
With the myriad-glittering quest;
Aspiration and devotion
From the prime were our brooding nest;
And youth, -- 'tis breathed emotion,
A seeing and a hearkening,
A gleaming and a darkening,
And a whispering to the breast.

"Then with bright hands uplifted
We strike the thousand lyres;
The music, on dreams drifted,
Pours all the world's desires;
And ever the song is sifted
From the heart of youth forecasting
The unknown everlasting
That bathes us and inspires.

"We gaze on the far flood flowing
Unimaginably free,
Multitudinous, mystical, glowing,
But all we do not see;
And a rapture is all our knowing,
That on fiery nerves comes stealing,
An intimate revealing
That all is yet to be.

"When sheathed and glacial o'er us
Arcturus courses cold,
And dry and dark before us
Aldebaran is rolled,
Far-clustering orbs in chorus
Shall light the pealing sky,
And throne to throne reply,
'The heavens grow not old.'"

Round the desert wild and eerie
The starry echoes clung;
In a region weird and dreary
The golden song was sung;
Over lands forlorn and weary,
Where the drifting white sand only
Drifts anew the sand-wreath lonely,
The radiant silence hung.





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