Elegy for a Lost Star

We are the music-makers,

And we are the dreamers of dreams,

Wandering by lone sea-breakers,

And sitting by desolate streams;

World-losers and world-forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams:

Yet we are the movers and shakers

Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties

We build up the world’s great cities,

And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire’s glory:

One man with a dream, at pleasure,

Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

And three with a new song’s measure

Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying

In the buried past of the earth,

Built Nineveh with our sighing,

And Babel itself with our mirth;

And o’erthrew them with prophesying

To the old of the new world’s worth;

For each age is a dream that is dying,

Or one that is coming to birth.

Seven Gifts of the Creator,

Seven colors of light

Seven seas in the wide world,

Seven days in a sennight,

Seven months of fallow

Seven continents trod, weave

Seven eras of history In the eye of God.

Oh, our Mother the Earth;

Oh, our Father the Sky,

Your children are we,

With tired backs.

We bring you the gifts you love.

Then weave for us a garment of brightness. . . .

May the warp be the white light of morning,

May the weft be the red light of evening,

May the fringes be the fallen rain,

May the border be the standing rainbow.

Thus weave for us a garment of brightness

That we may walk fittingly where birds sing;

That we may walk fittingly where the grass is green.

Oh, Our Mother Earth;

Oh, Our Father Sky.

Time, it is a tapestry

Threads that weave it number three

These be known, from first to last,

Future, Present, and the Past

Present, Future, weft-thread be

Fleeting in inconstancy

Yet the colors they do add

Serve to make the heart be glad

Past, the warp-thread that it be

Sets the path of history

Every moment ’neath the sun

Every battle, lost or won

Finds its place within the lee

Of Time’s enduring memory

Fate, the weaver of the bands

Holds these threads within Her hands

Plaits a rope that in its use

Can be a lifeline, net—or noose.