(October 7, 1946)

This is the song I am singing tonight
When the stars are pale and the sky is deep.
It's a song I have learned from all things bright,
When the weeping laugh and the laughing weep,
When the dying live, and the living die,
For something is singing that's stronger than I,
Like the sun or the rain or the earth or the sky,
While the sleeping wake and the waking sleep.

This is a song of forgotten things,
The flowers of summer, the hush of the snow,
The millions of glorious, golden springs
That blossomed and faded and died long ago.
It's a song that was made when the earth was begun
Of the dances we dance and the races we run,
Of the laughter and tears that will never be done
And the millions of things that we never will know.

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Lois Duncan wrote YA horror, including I Know What You Did Last Summer, which spawned a movie franchise. This poem was written when she was 12.