A SONG OF THE STARS.

BY ANNA BLACKWELL.

ARGUMENT.

The Planets, in their mazy dance, declare the joyousness of their harmonious life; at Ura nia's request, they offer the homage of their song to their great Parent, the Sun; then is heard from a distance the voice of the Earth, lamenting the various evils which she suffers, and her impending dissolution, in consequence of Man's ignorance of the laws of combined Order which govern the Universe, and which require him to cultivate and perfect the surface of his Planet, and thereby reuder her healthy and beautiful, that she may be fitted for admission among her sister orbs, who cannot receive her while continuing in an unharmonic state, into union with them. The Planets listen to the out-pouring of her grief, and with united voices appeal to the Sun in her behalf.

The Solar Orb in reply, proclaims the Integrity of the Universe, and announces to them that the Earth, after passing through the ignorance and incoherence attendant on the early stages of developement, will be regenerated through the associated and ennobled energies of the human race, and will be admitted into the companionship of the Solar System, and of the Universe of GOD.

The Planets raise an anthem of joy and worship to THE MOST HIGH, with which, choral res ponses from every region of the Universe are heard to blend in solemn and rejcicing harmony.

JOYOUSLY on tireless pinions

Woven of the purple light,

Through the golden Sun's dominions
Evermore his circling minions,

Moving in immortal pleasure

To a high harmonious measure,

Twine in ethereal maze their dances bright.

THE SONG OF THE PLANETS.

We move in bliss through the fields of space,
Our soul is love, and our form is grace,
And we blend in the grasp of our deepening gaze
The wisdom of past and of coming days.
The tearful realms where Life's spiral springs
We have left behind, and its widening rings
Grow brighter as they broader grow,
And with a fuller rapture flow.

We hope no morning, we dread no night,
We bathe in a fathomless ocean of light,
And we joy as the folds of our radiant hair
Float out on the breath of the azure air,
And our burnished sandals brightly glance
At each swell and fall of our wreath'd dance;
Order, beauty, gladness, power,

The living wealth of our glorious dower.

From the same Parent-Orb I draw my life,
Formed, like yourselves, within his mighty womb;
Yet golden peace is yours, while iron strife

Crushes my being with its weight of gloom;
Sweet sisters! cease awhile your joyous songs,
And listen to the story of my wrongs!

I bear a race upon my sorrowing breast
Whose errors forge the rivets of my fate;
By every frightful form of ill oppressed,
Weak and unloving, stupid and ingrate;
The lowest link of the electric chain
That binds in one Creation's starry train.

Conflict from morn to night, from night to morn;
On every breeze discordant echoes sound;
'Mid pain, and grief, and want the race is born,
Want, grief, and pain its onward path surround;
Goaded by fierce aspirings, dimly seen,

They curse the mockery of the sky serene!

Hunger is on them all! they cry for food!
Food for the body fallen from its prime;

Food for the soul, whose shrunk and darkened mood
Shows but the shadow of its scope sublime,

Whose thought Creation's wondrous sphere should trace,
Whose love should fold them all in its embrace!

O'er wastes and deserts wandering, tempest-tossed,
Man darkly gropes in self-created night,
The fair proportions of his nature lost,

A dwarfed abortion 'mid the sons of light;
While false philosophies, selfishness, distrust,
Have wrapped his spirit in their coils of rust.

And yet I spread my flowery vales for him,
The shadow of my mountains on him falls,

For him I raise my arching forests dim,

And hang with pendant gems my caverned halls; For him my rivers flowing to the sea,

For him my waves' eternal melody!

The swelling joy of Spring's returning prime,
The fragrant music of my summer airs,

The ripened beauty of glad Autumn-time,
The paler glories that the Winter wears,
Image my open secret to his eyes,

And speak the latent wealth that round him lies.

My elements await but his command,

With courser winds his lightest hest to fill; Follow with fiery zeal his guiding hand,

And chain the chafing billows to his will; Rouse at his beck the lightning from its lair, And write his missives on the viewless air

But he unconscious of his destined power,

(Creation's frailest, mightiest extreme) Heeds not the summons of each freighted hour, Wastes the rich moments in his idle dream; Reads not my wisdom-pictured lore, nor hears Accords that harmonize with chiming spheres.

I languish for his aid! my climates fail,
And dire disorders fill my troubled zones;
'Neath fell simoons my fevered deserts quail,
Howl o'er my frozen plains the frost-winds' tones;
And hideous creatures, weeds of deadly breath,
Fill me with poison, pestilence, and death.

O'erwhelmed beneath my woes, I sink, I die,
Fading from your bright sisterhood away;
An empty wreck, 'mid ruined worlds to lie,
Lost from the circuit of your starry way;
Resolved to primal elements, again
To grow from Chaos into life through Pain!

So the sad Earth; the Planets list the sound,
And with their prayers the Parent-Orb surround,
In earnest tones their dulcet voices plead
For the lone Exile sorrowing in her need.

THE PRAYER OF THE PLANETS.

Great Parent! hear the Earth
Mourning her doom!

And can it be that never
Athwart the gloom

Of her sad fate shall dart the living ray
Forever?

When shall her darkness kindle in the day
Of Order's birth?

We turn, O Sun! to thee;
Through countless years

Sustained by thy rich life

Our unformed spheres

Struggled from Chaos dimly into light;
The strife

Of our sad sister aid through discord's night
To harmony!

We mourn, O Parent-Sun!

Her grief and pain;

When shall the Earth complete

The golden chain

Of our perfected orbs thy throne around?

Her feet

Tread our bright dance, while choral pæans sound For victory won?

They ceased; and through the azure air
Floated the echoes of that prayer,

As waves in solemn cadence break

The stillness of some quiet lake,

What time the evening breezes sigh
To the cloud-islets sailing by.

Then all was silent, not a sound

Thrilled through the arching blue around;
No more the spheral music rung,

But voiceless in its caverns hung;

And hushed, as when on Ocean's breast
The evening breeze is lulled to rest ;
The listening orbs in silence bend,
And on the Sun's response attend.

THE DISCOURSE OF THE SUN.

Forth from the blaze of the Eternal Throne
Irradiations of Essential Light

To Being's utmost glimmering verge are thrown,
'Mid Chaos working, hid from keenest sight;
Atom to atom linking, each its own

Finding in virtue of attractive might.

The Highest to the lowliest thus descends,

And the extremes of Being's wondrous regions blends.
Upward and outward coiled, Creation's spire,
Substance attaining through accretion slow,
With painful striving, ever broader, higher,
In varying form from realm to realm doth grow,
With an inherent, never-quenched desire

To reach again the Fount whose wondrous flow
Gave to its being birth; whose influent force
Sustains each growing atom on its destined course.

In GoD all things are one; Essential Life,
Tending itself in Form to ultimate,
The symbols of Creation's hieroglyph

Calls into being. Know that to Create
Is to embody Power Divine; the strife

That on the growth of nascent forms doth wait,
Springs from the blindness of that second Will
That deep within the Causal germ lay folded still.
Thus from the Elemental film, condensed, refined,
Conducted onward through the linked array
Of ore, and plant, and animal, till Mind

(Hidden in those, yet active,) 'gins display More of its light, in human forms enshrined,

All things are born; and thus the Vital Ray
Through planet, sun, and system, purer, higher,
Through endless cycles passing, rises tow'rd its Sire.

New wealth of wisdom, beauty, joy, the while
Unfolding brighter in each nobler sphere,
With kindred forms, whose fair love-kindled smile
Adds sweeter lustre to each widening year,
In high communion blending: selfish guile,

(Product of Ignorance,) and grief, and fear, Lost from the sparkling life, as from rich wine Its foul and bitter lees the generous years refine.

Sorrow on blindness waits; the primal laws

Of Wisdom, Love, and Use, not yet revealed, Pain, sternest guide! the groping seeker draws 'Neath Order's law (sole freedom!) to be healed; Order sublime, with which the Central Cause,

As with a signet, all His worlds hath sealed; Order, the law of Love, which yet shall reign Supreme, absorbing and transforming Wrong and Pain.