Verdea's Song

Poul Anderson, The Stars Are Also Fire, 34, p. 459.

Although the Lunarian song is almost untranslatable, Terrans translate some of its phrases, quote them in conversation, shout them at night, scrawl them on bulkheads or flash them on screens. I did not get a lot out of the song on a first reading but let's have another crack at it. In the text, the words are italicized. My comments follow the quoted passages.

"-You: Law alone, sight unbloodied, and never a heart ripped loose for gods that never were."

A challenge to the Terrestrial Federation which imposes its laws and nothing else, nothing good, on Luna. The Lawmakers lack vision to perceive the harm caused. They live without feeling or passion despite traditionally believing in (in fact nonexistent) gods.

"Death is no more than stones that lie still in the groundgrip of waterless wastelands;..."

Earth is compared to a wasteland? Their deaths are meaningless because their lives were? (I am struggling here.)

"ever obedient whirl the worlds;"

The rest of the universe faithfully orbits according to physical laws despite whatever is happening on Earth?

"their ways you will understand and their whys will be born of your brains. You have given yourselves to serve and to master the steadiness of the stars."

Terrestrial civilization at least accumulates intellectual/scientific knowledge of the universe.

"But the dust of stones shall be bones, dry bones rising for a journey from doubt into darkness."

I can't get a lot out of this one. While alive, we doubt. Then death is darkness.

"Your forgotten begotten shall trouble your dreams, the heart shall break its cage, and death shall laugh at your law."

Terrestrials begot, then forgot, Lunarians but cannot forget them completely. Caged by Terrestrial restrictions, the Lunarians will passionately break free. Nothing last forever. Death laughs...

"For the stars are also fire.-"

There is fire/passion/energy off Earth, not just on it.