The Earth Sings

Amidst churchyard and castle, the earth sings.
The earth sings.
Steeple bells peal blithely while the earth sings.
Songbirds emerge like fireworks
from still verge with nests well hidden.
Pheasants rest in veiled streambeds
of an ever-weeping fen.
The earth sings.

Beneath pastures in harvest, the earth sings.
The earth sings.
Dense mist lifts like curtains when the earth sings.
Berries red and ripe for biting
beckon from emboldened hedgerows.
Secreted in soft green fields,
crows ascend like smoke billows.
The earth sings.

Gentle as a hillock’s crest, the earth sings.
The earth sings.
Meadows swell with melodies the earth sings.
Patchwork footpaths unite below
soaring cloisters knit thick with briar.
Burnished by sunlight’s bright touch,
castle walls exalt a spire.
The earth sings.



A Brief Lesson on the Samisen from Texas Belle:



According to [Margarette Ball] Dickson, the Samisen "is limited to three stanzas and should be light and delicate as the melody of this dainty instrument." She believed the pattern is best suited "to outdoor beauty, the elfin, supernatural and eerie or to light, delicate fancies," but I feel sure it could be perfectly well adapted to other purposes.

Designed originally as a song lyric by Carol Henning Bair, Strasburg OH, some time before 1954, the Samisen is limited to three stanzas of 8 lines each, with a 3-syllable refrain appearing at the end of lines 1 and 3, and standing alone as lines 2 and 8. The meter has been variously described, but it appears to be a regular trochaic pattern ('u) with amphimacers ('u') for the refrain and for the end-rhyme in lines 5 and 7. Lines 1, 3, 4 and 6 have four feet, lines 5 and 7 have three feet, and lines 2 and 8 (the refrain) have one foot.

The only end-rhyme other than the A-Refrain occurs in lines 5 and 7, the 3-foot lines. The rhyme pattern, then, is AR, R, AR, x, b, x, b, R. That second rhyme is different for each stanza, but the refrain remains the same. Spelled out completely, it looks like this:

AR, R, AR, x, b, x, b, R.
AR, R, AR, x, c, x, c, R.
AR, R, AR, x, d, x, d, R.