SPECIAL STARLIGHT

Carl Sandburg

 

All:             The Creator of night and of birth

                   Was the Maker of the stars.

Solo 1:       Shall we look up now at stars in Winter

                   And call them always sweeter friends

                   Because this story of a Mother and a Child

                   Never is told with the stars left out?

Solo 2:       Is it a Holy Night now when a child issues

                   Out of the dark and the unknown

                   Into the starlight?

Solo 3:       Shall all wanderers over the earth, all homeless ones,

                   All against whom doors are shut and words spoken—

                   Shall these find the earth less strange tonight?

Solo 2:       Shall they hear news, a whisper on the night wind?

All:             “A Child is born.”  “The meek shall inhert the earth.”

Solo 4:       Shall a quiet dome of stars high over

                   Make signs and a friendly language

                   Among all nations?

Solo 1:       Shall they yet gather with no clenched fists at all,

                   And look into each other’s faces and see eye to eye,

Solo 3:       And find ever new testaments of man as a sojourner

                   And a toiler and a brother of fresh understandings?

All:             Shall there be now always

                   believers and more believers

                   of sunset and moonrise,

                   of moonset and moonrise,

                   of wheeling numbers of stars,

                   and wheels within wheels?

Solo 4:       Shall plain habitations off the well-known roads

                   Count now for a little more than they used to?

Solo 1:       Shall plain ways and people held close to earth

                   Be reckoned among things to be written about?

 

Solo 2:     Shall tumult, grandeur, fanfare, panoply, prepared

                  loud noises

                  Stand equal to a quiet heart, thoughts, vast dreams

                  Of men conquering the earth by conquering themselves?

Solo 3:      Is there a time for ancient genius of man

                   To be set for comparison with the latest generations?

Solo 1:       Is there a time for stripping to simple childish questions

Solo 4:       On a Holy Night we may say:

All:             The Creator of night and of birth

                   Was the Maker of the stars.