________________________________________________
Title: Music: An Ode
Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne [
More Titles by Swinburne]
I
Was it light that spake from the darkness, or music that shone
from the word,
When the night was enkindled with sound of the sun or the
first-born bird?
Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage of seasons that fall
and rise,
Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh, and blinded with light
that dies,
Lived not surely till music spake, and the spirit of life was
heard.
II
Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be,
Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man, and the thrall was free.
Slave of nature and serf of time, the bondman of life and death,
Dumb with passionless patience that breathed but forlorn and
reluctant breath,
Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer, and communed aloud with
the sea.
III
Morning spake, and he heard: and the passionate silent noon
Kept for him not silence: and soft from the mounting moon
Fell the sound of her splendour, heard as dawn's in the breathless
night,
Not of men but of birds whose note bade man's soul quicken and leap
to light:
And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness of earth
were as chords in tune.
[The end]
Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem: Music: An Ode
________________________________________________
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
