Voices of Earth
Voices of Earth
Original Text
The Poems of Archibald Lampman, ed. Duncan Campbell Scott (Toronto: George N. Morang, 1900): 218-19, as reprinted in The Poems of Archibald Lampman (including At the Long Sault), intro. by Margaret Coulby of Toronto Press, 1974), and from Alcyone (Ottawa: Ogilvy, 1899).
2The song of star to star, but there are sounds
3More deep than human joy and human tears,
4That Nature uses in her common rounds;
5The fall of streams, the cry of winds that strain
6The oak, the roaring of the sea's surge, might
7Of thunder breaking afar off, or rain
8That falls by minutes in the summer night.
9These are the voices of earth's secret soul,
10Uttering the mystery from which she came.
11To him who hears them grief beyond control,
12Or joy inscrutable without a name,
13Wakes in his heart thoughts bedded there, impearled,
14Before the birth and making of the world.
Notes
1] the music of the spheres: in pre-modern astromony, the planets and the fixed stars were thought to make music, worshipping God's perfection by imitating it. Back to Line
Publication Start Year
1899
RPO poem Editors
Ian Lancashire
RPO Edition
RPO 1997.
Rhyme
Form