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Title: Listening
Author: Gilbert Parker [
More Titles by Parker]
I have lain beneath the pine trees just to hear the thrush's calling,
I have waited for the throstle where the harvest fields were brown,
I have caught the lark's sweet trilling from the depths of cloud-land falling
And the piping of the linnet through the willow branches blown.
But you have some singing graces, you who sing because you love it,
That are higher than the throstle, or the linnet, or the lark;
And, however far my soul may reach, your song is far above it;
And I falter while I follow as a child does in the dark.
In elder days, when all the world was silent save the beating
Of the tempest-gathered ocean 'gainst the grey volcanic walls,
When the light had met the darkness and the mountains sent their greeting
To each other in sharp flashes as the vivid lightning falls,
Then the high gods said, "In token that we love the earth we fashioned,
We will set the white stars singing, and teach man the art of song":
And there rose up from the valleys sounds of love and life impassioned,
Till men cried, with arms uplifted, "Now from henceforth we are strong!"
Adown the ages there have come the sounds of that first singing,
Lifting up the weary-hearted in the fever of the time;
And I, who wait and wander far, felt all my soul upspringing,
To but touch those ancient forces and the energies sublime,
When I heard you who had heard it--that first song--perhaps in dreaming,
Till it filled you with fine fervour and the hopes of its refrain;
And I knew that God was gracious and had led me in the gleaming
Of a song-shine that is holy and that quiets all my pain.
Though the birds sing in the meadows and fill all the air with sweetness,
They sing only in the present, and they sing because they must;
They are wanton in their pureness, and in all their fine completeness,
They trill out their lives forgotten to the silence of the dust.
But if you should pass to-morrow where your songs could never reach us,
There would still be throbbing through us all the music of your voice;
And your spirit would speak through the chords, as though it would beseech us
To remember that the noblest ends have ever noblest choice.
[The end]
Gilbert Parker's poem: Listening
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