Song of Palms
Mighty, luminous, and calm
Is the country of the palm,
Crowned with sunset and sunrise,
Under blue unbroken skies,
Waving from green zone to zone,
Over wonders of its own;
Trackless, untraversed, unknown,
Changeless through the centuries.
Who can say what thing it bears?
Blazing bird and blooming flower,
Dwelling there for years and years,
Hold the enchanted secret theirs:
Life and death and dream have made
Mysteries in many a shade,
Hollow haunt and hidden bower
Closed alike to sun and shower.
Who is 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 sings to the bird,
And the day sings one rich word,
And the great night comes replying.
Long red reaches of the cane,
Yellow winding water-lane,
Verdant 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
In the wide leaves’ restless world.
Many thousand years have been,
And the sun alone hath seen,
Like a high and radiant ocean,
All the fair palm world in motion;
But the crimson bird hath fed
With its mate of equal red,
And the flower in soft explosion
With the flower hath been wed.
And its long luxuriant thought
Lofty palm to palm hath taught,
While 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.