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A Star

O silent sphere of silver-soft-spun light,
Thou crystal pearl strung on an airy veil
Suffusing bright celestial delight
In snowy glory o’er thy starry trail:
The bridal necklace of the night inflame
With purer ray, whose brighter progeny
Unveils her blushing face, unmarred by shame,
With vestal grace’s immortality—
Or so at first you seemed to me.
Yet naught I see now, but the faded spark
Of silent photons passing fitfully
Through deserts vast and void, and endless dark.
Are all the heavens a malign illusion
Sown unguided by the hands of Fate
And empty Chance, for hapless man’s confusion
In hubris-blinded wisdom desolate?
Is all your glory but the optic nerve
Convulsing with a chemic undulation,
Expressing signals traced along the curve
Of cosmic space-time’s ghostly adumbration?
Enough. Some subtler sense within my soul
Of reason and aesthetic sight combined
Perceives aright the hierarchic whole
Of countless patterns into one entwined,
Revealing in their firmamental dance
To primal nature’s wilder harmony,
Sublimely wrought through time’s azure expanse,
The one and many knit in unity.
As flowing waters pulse from hidden wells,
Cascading into fountains silver-clear,
Or stars illume the shadow-dappled dells
And glimmer in the ocean’s gilded mirror:
So beauty’s form subsists eternally,
Unveiled incarnate from that changeless Source
Who maketh every lesser being be
And guides the heavens in their higher course—
Who spreads the shining heavens, sun and moon;
Photonic light diffused through space and time;
Who weaves, as though upon a living loom
The cosmic pattern of creation’s rhyme—
Who fills the heavens with His ordered grace
And leaves in them, though dimmed, an imprint of His triune face.

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John Freeborn is a twelfth grade student at Logos Online School. He lives in Concordia, Kansas.

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12 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    John, you have written a great classic poem at such a tender age. It is filled with sparkling word rhymes that stimulate by their exceptional word choice, super vocabulary and your deft alliteration. You have a classical poetry future as bright as the star you eulogize. Your contemplation of eternity and the divine is exceptional and reaches into the heart and soul.

    Reply
  2. Stephen M. Dickey

    Greetings from Lawrence!
    I second Roy’s opinion, it’s a very impressive piece, it’s very rich in astronomical imagery. I grew up in a household with a laser/optics theorist in it, and am admittedly a sucker for words like “photon” in poems, and poems on this kind of topic.
    I have a couple of questions comments, that you can do with as you will:
    What is the subject of “inflame”? I am also wondering why you have “maketh” versus “guides”, etc. Seems to me you could just have “makes” and have the second syllable of “every” count (similar to what you did in “hierarchic”) and have it as an inversion. But these are minor points.

    Reply
    • John Freeborn

      I appreciate the kind words. Regarding your additional comments: 1) The subject of inflame is the “necklace of the night” (i.e., the starry sky). 2) I didn’t really care for the “maketh,” either: it felt incongruous. I guess I’m just too used to giving it two syllables when writing poetry — your suggestion never even crossed my mind. Thanks for pointing that out!

      Reply
  5. Shamik Banerjee

    Love your piece, John. The poem imparts a classical feeling, given the rich vocabulary and syntax. I was captivated by the first few lines and thought it was a poem on astronomy solely, but the turn not only impressed me but doubled the delight of reading it. Thank you for sharing your talent. God bless you.

    Reply
  6. Daniel Kemper

    First, I third Roy’s comment.

    Next on the nit raised by Steven: Musashi says, “Pay attention to trifles.” To get a poem examined on such details is a sign of the skill behind the poem. For me, since the poem was set in an archaic tone, it didn’t bug me. Suggest “fashions” if you want to change it. The tone was even Miltonic in places with such phrases as “Convulsing with a chemic undulation,” and “Photonic light diffused.” Some amateur physicist likely will try to ding you on redundancy for photon…light, but your attention to detail seems clear: light is not always in the form of a photon, a particle; it can be a wave, which you handle deftly with “diffused.” That’s one of the things I like most about this poem: The details like that are right but are not obtrusive. I also liked the attention to perfecting meter, maintaining a metrical smoothness throughout. There’s a lot to love here.

    BTW, is this, by any chance a section of a larger work, perhaps in progress?

    Reply
    • John Freeborn

      Thank you! “Photonic light” was supposed to show how a star’s beauty (the poem’s first theme) isn’t antithetical to what we learn from science (presented as the materialistic doubt brought up in the poem’s second section). As C.S. Lewis said, “That [mere “balls of flaming gas”] isn’t what stars are, but only what they are made of.” In other words, the light we see is comprised of photons (or wave/particle duality, as you point out), but that doesn’t destroy its being something beautiful: the whole (light) is greater than its component parts. Perhaps I made this point too subtly, though. To your question, I actually do hope to expand the theme; there was much more I’d hoped to weave into the poem, but I decided to cut this version short so I could finish it before the SCP High School Poetry Contest deadline.

      Reply
  7. Gary Borck

    John, this is an exceptional poem. There’s definitely a poetic voice here. A wonderful, flowing and richly descriptive poem. A real pleasure to read。

    Reply
  8. Paul A. Freeman

    I liked the archaic style. It felt Wordsworthian.

    I don’t think I could have carried through a poem of such length at your age, John. Nice one.

    Reply
  9. Margaret Coats

    A rich description in beautiful language, as others have noted. But that’s not all. This is a poem with logical structure: four parts (approximately ten lines each), and the type of language changes to suit reasoned discourse in each part. The aesthetic perception comes first, followed by scientific description clearly articulated to contrast with the aesthetic. Part Three unifies One and Two by applying a philosophic perspective. Its conclusion naturally leads to a question about the source of beauty and truth and their interrelation–which is answered in the religious considerations of Part Four. John, the magnificence of your poem is to bring these parts together so that they flow naturally from one to the next, in language that changes appropriately with the frame of reference. And yet, the star as subject is not lost sight of. The transcendent experience of seeing it and thinking about it develops masterfully–concluding easily in the longer final line where the reader is invited to see the face of God.

    Reply

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