Question

Summary of choristers

Answer 1

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 birds

For 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 be

His 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 notes

Fall with rapture upon our ears,

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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.

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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.