Later Poems / by Bliss Carman [electronic text]

The Choristers

WHEN earth was finished and fashioned well, There was never a musical note to tell How glad God was, save the voice of the rain And the sea and the wind on the lonely plain And the rivers among the hills.And so God made the marvellous birdsFor a choir of joy transcending words,That the world might hear and comprehend How rhythm and harmony can mend The spirits' hurts and ills.

He filled their tiny bodies with fire, He taught them love for their chief desire, And gave them the magic of wings to beHis celebrants over land and sea, Wherever man might dwell. And to each he apportioned a fragment of song —Those broken melodies that belong To the seraphs' chorus, that we might learn The healing of gladness and discern In beauty how all is well.

So music dwells in the glorious throats Forever, and the enchanted notesFall with rapture upon our ears,

Moving our hearts to joy and tears For things we cannot say. In the wilds the whitethroat sings in the rain His pure, serene, half-wistful strain; And when twilight falls the sleeping hills Ring with the cry of the whippoorwills In the blue dusk far away.

In the great white heart of the winter storm The chickadee sings, for his heart is warm, And his note is brave to rally the soul From doubt and panic to self-control And elation that knows no fear. The bluebird comes with the winds of March, Like a shred of sky on the naked larch; The redwing follows the April rain To whistle contentment back again With his sturdy call of cheer.

The orioles revel through orchard boughs In their coats of gold for spring's carouse; In shadowy pastures the bobwhites call, And the flute of the thrush has a melting fall Under the evening star. On the verge of June when peonies blow And joy comes back to the world we know, The bobolinks fill the fields of light With a tangle of music silver-bright To tell how glad they are.

The tiny warblers fill summer trees With their exquisite lesser litanies; The tanager in his scarlet coat In the hemlock pours from a vibrant throat His canticle of the sun. The loon on the lake, the hawk in the sky, And the sea-gull —each has a piercing cry, Like outposts set in the lonely vast To cry "all's well" as Time goes past And another hour is gone.

But of all the music in God's plan Of a mystical symphony for man, I shall remember best of all— Whatever hereafter may befall Or pass and cease to be—The hermit's hymn in the solitudes Of twilight through the mountain woods, And the field-larks crying about our doors On the soft sweet wind across the moors At morning by the sea.