Song of Palms

Arthur O'Shaughnessy

1844 to 1881

Poem Image
Track 1

Type into the gaps to complete the poem. To reset the game, click on the "Reset Game" button located below the poem. This will clear all the words you've placed in the blanks, and resetting the poem to its original state with empty blanks. If you prefer to drag and drop words, click the Drag & Drop button below. You can also print out the poem for use in the classroom.

Every 10th word

Mighty, luminous, and calm
Is the country of the palm, 
Crowned with sunset and sunrise, 
Under blue skies,
Waving from green zone to zone,
Over wonders its own;
Trackless, untraversed, unknown, 
Changeless through the centuries.

Who can say what thing it bears? 
Blazing and blooming flower,
Dwelling there for years and years, 
Hold the enchanted secret theirs:
Life and death and have made
Mysteries in many a shade,
Hollow haunt hidden bower
Closed alike to sun and shower.

Who ruler of each race
Living in each boundless place, 
Growing, flowering, and flying, 
Glowing, revelling, and dying?
Wave-like, palm by palm is stirred, 
And the bird to the bird, 
And the day sings one word, 
And the great night comes replying.

Long reaches of the cane, 
Yellow winding water-lane, 
isle and amber river, 
Lisp and murmur back again, 
And ripe under-worlds deliver 
Rapturous souls of perfume, hurled 
Up to where green oceans quiver 
the wide leaves’ restless world.

Many thousand years have been, 
And the sun alone hath seen,
Like a and radiant ocean,
All the fair palm world in motion; 
But the crimson bird hath fed 
With mate of equal red,
And the flower in soft  
With the flower hath been wed.

And its luxuriant thought
Lofty palm to palm hath taught, 
a single vast liana
All one brotherhood hath wrought, 
Crossing forest and savannah,
Binding fern and coco-tree, 
Fig-tree, buttress-tree, banana,
Dwarf cane and tall marití.