celebrating twenty five issues of Danse Macabre...
Song of the Starmen
We set our gaze on the future
Absorbing the ken of the past;
We set our souls on conquest, yes--
To build up a realm that might last!...
We took our risk to the far demands,
To the planets of alien suns;
We gave our voices, our sweat, our strengths
To a work that cried to be done!
And in our minds, light-years from home,
From safety, from hearthstones' fires,
We held as our beacon one lone thought:
"We will build to the soul's desire!"
Again, again good men were lost
To win a new star road, a world;
Again, again on inhuman fields
Our banner of pride we unfurl'd!
And now a legend wide, that shines
With the glow of a billion stars,
Heralds what we've accomplish'd; yes--
To make men the new thing they are!
Gaze on the vast hegemony
That we've (boldly) wrested from Time;
This is the Day of Stellar Man,
Day of the mind's hope (at prime)!
Star cities, trade, lives purposeful
Liv'd in the bright hour called "Noon";
Beauty's enthron'd, Honor's enshrined
In a Galaxy now our own.
Onward and onward the mortal dream
To the galaxies yet untam'd;
Onward and onward, starward yet,
To worlds that are hungers sans names!
Ever at 'point' of that great trek,
We, the brave, the fierce-in-desire,
Rekindle the torch of Man's longing
In the blaze of Hope's holy fire.
Onward and onward, the race, the hope,
Where the white-hot nebulae rave
We set our gaze on the future
With no thought of pay nor of praise.
Men at the ocean's edge paced, frowned;
We, in starships, searched the void;
We are the warmen of Man's long dream
Whose name is a paean: "Out There!"
There--where the reach of loftiest minds
Touches Eternity's face,
There you will find us striving yet
For the ought-to-be, won with grace!
We are the captains of the suns,
The sailors of oceans of Night;
We were the first of men's heroes;
Holding danger our one delight.
So we dar'd and ventured and bled
On a billion dark far-flung isles;
Our banner was "longing", young (and bright)
As the blaze in a dreamer's eyes!
We are the glad and the guiltless,
The strategists temeraire...
Where Mankind's dream-eternal leads
We are first to be winging there.
We were the first to plant the flag
Of that purpose whose name is "Life";
We were the first to fall to the force
Of opponents' and Nature's strifes.
We are the last best hope of men,
The hunters of worlds unknown;
We prize only peril, soul's best use of pow'rs--
These things and these alone...
To win a beauty by risk and might,
To live lives for ends of worth--
This is our glory, our one theme--
We, the starmen of ancient Earth!
Our final resting place shall be
Where the last of galaxies thin,
There at the edge of Endlessness,
Light-centuries far from men.
For where we go no man has gone;
And so our last grave must be
Beyond the beginning and its end
In the skies of Eternity.
There, there where only emptiness
Surrounds the great Ocean of Time
We will sleep 'til a new awakening
Past a Cycle of Blazing Fire!
So long as men remember us,
And revere and approve and know--
Our sort shall be Man's starmen,
First to love and dream and go!
We've known the arms of Beauty,
The battle, the mystery, the pelf;
We fare far and travel always light;
For our search is to be a self.
So long as we use human pow'rs,
Venture's our goddess, yes--
All that we'll long for is a goal--
Some new and bright-blazing quest!
Honor us not for our longings,
If there's work, we smile, grim, and go;
Honor us for our meaning
In the Dream that Mankind's known.
From the Terran shore fled nightward,
We have been heroes in lore
To those who scorn safety, investing
In some high, demanding cause.
We are the men of primal hope,
Of Man's deep-contexted design:
We are the starmen of Terra--
Seekers of Worth as of Life!
We knew a beginning at Man's birth,
But we shall never taste death.
So long as Eternity's siren call heard--
We shall answer, and scorn to rest!
We who set our gaze on the future
Have absorbed the ken of the past;
We have set our souls on conquest, yes--
While Eternity shall last!..
Robert David Michael Cerello
Issue XXV
Symphonie Fantastique
Volume Four, Number Five
Danse Macabre
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