[Editor: This poem by Ethel Turner was published in The Bookfellow (Sydney, NSW), 25 March 1899.]
A Trembling Star.
“There is my little trembling star,” she said.
I looked: once more
The tender sea had put the sun to bed
And heaven’s floor
Was grey.
And nowhere else in all that young night sky
Was any star
But one that hung above the sea, not high
Nor very far
Away.
“I watch it every night,” she said, and crept
Within my arm.
“Soft little star, I wish the angels kept
It safe from harm
Alway.
“I know it is afraid,” she said; her eyes
Held a sweet tear.
“They send it all alone into the skies,
No big stars near
To play.
“They push it out before the sweet kind moon
Lights up the sea.
They laugh because it fears the dark, ‘Soon, soon,
You ’ll braver be’
They say.
“One night I climbed far up that high white tree
Beside the beach,
And tried to stretch my hand across the sea,
And tried to reach
The grey.
“For something made me feel my heart would break
Unless that night
I in my hand my trembling star could take
And kiss its fright
Away.
“There only blew a strange wind chillily
And clouds were swept,
The angels would not let my own star see
That some one wept.
I pray
“To Christ who hears my little prayers each night
That He will seek
Through all His skies for that sweet frightened light;
And stoop his cheek
And say
“‘My angels must not send so frail a thing
To light the west.
Lift up the little trembling star to cling
About my breast
Alway.’”
Ethel Turner.
Source:
The Bookfellow (Sydney, NSW), 25 March 1899, pp. 25-26
Also published in:
The Leader (Melbourne, Vic.), 15 April 1899, p. 43
The Mercury (Hobart, Tas.), 26 April 1899, p. 2 of The Mercury Supplement
Kilmore Free Press (Kilmore, Vic.), 17 August 1899, p. 1
The Bulletin (Sydney, NSW), 21 July 1900, [p. ii] The Red Page (col. 1)
Adelaide Observer (Adelaide, SA), 12 September 1903, p. 8
The Freeman’s Journal (Sydney, NSW), 16 July 1908, p. 36
The Lone Hand (Sydney, NSW), 1 November 1915, p. 358
The Northern Champion (Taree, NSW), 25 July 1923, p. 1
Editor’s notes:
This poem was appended to the end of an article about Ethel Turner.
alway = (archaic) always
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