Monday Poems -- "The Planet Mars" -- by Albert Bigelow Paine

TOGETHER we sat in the summer night,

    (An August night with a wealth of stars)

And we marked where it gleamed so redly bright,

                The Planet Mars.

 

We spoke of the cruel wrongs of earth,

    Of the host of evils that greed unbars;

And then we spoke of another birth

                In the Planet Mars.

 

And we wondered if each would know the name

    Of the other, up there, amid the stars,

And we said we hoped they would be the same

                In the Planet Mars.

 

And so we talked through the summer night,

    Of life and of love amid the stars;

And how our wrongs would be all made right

                In the Planet Mars.

*     *     *     *     *

Albert Paine (1861-1937) was an author who worked with the humorist Mark Twain and the poet William Allen White. He lived in Iowa and Kansas before moving to France where he wrote two books about Joan of Arc. He was also a member of the Pulitzer Prize committee. The above poem was published in the co-authored collection Rhymes by Two Friends.