Explore "The Choristers" by Bliss Carman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.