Follow Your Star

As into the skies of Melchior,
Gaspar and Baltazar
Into the life of every man
There flashes forth a star.

It shone in the eyes of a people
It stood in a nation’s ken 
But the only fools that followed it
Were Three Wise Men.

And they rode with the hearts of children
Till to the walls they came 
First of Christ’s crusaders
To the walls of Jerusalem.

And half-roused sleepers wondered
And the village dogs would bark
To hear the Wise Men’s caravan
Go blundering through the dark.

But never a doubt in Melchior in Gaspar or Baltazar
The ways were wild 
But they heeded not
For their eyes were on the star.

And they went with their treasures of frankincense
They went with their myrrh and their gold
While over the feasts of their jesting kin
The mad thing was told.

Yet deeper they plunged in their folly
And heaven and earth seemed lost
But there marched unseen beside them
God’s flame-winged battle host.

And they found their peace and their healing
As they knelt in the stable bare
And a day would come when their kin in the East
Would curse that they were not there.

As into the skies of Melchior
Gaspar and Baltazar
Into the lives of you and me
There flashes a star.

- Paddy O’Connor, ssc