Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, QUATORZAINS: 4. TO SOUND, by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

QUATORZAINS: 4. TO SOUND, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Spirit, who steals from silence's embrace
Last Line: Or sleep for ever in my charmed ear.
Subject(s): Beauty; Grief; Sound; Tears; Sorrow; Sadness


1.
SPIRIT, who steals from silence's embrace,
Lending to mortal thoughts a powerful wing;
Now marching slow with solemn pace,
The broken cries of passion syllabling;
Now gambolling, with sprightly grace,
In ladies' voices as they sing:
How thou dost prison up in lovely wreaths
The hearer's soul, like buds, whose folded leaves
Conceal their lusciousness in rosy sheaths.
How, when some hapless beauty, sighing, grieves,
Thou barbest every arrowed sigh she breathes,
And givest a sting to sobs she quickly heaves,
Till down our tears in trickling gushes roll,
Tears, the pure blood-drops of the wounded soul.

2.
Thou hangest up in the caverns of our ears
Thy precious dewdrops, and our inmost souls
Echo thy beauty. When the lightning sears,
Clad in thy power the lowering thunder rolls,
The scornful laugh of elements. Past years
Thou mournest when the bell suddenly tolls;
And then thou load'st with iron tone the gale.
Thou hoverest with a wing plumed with sweet notes,
Moth-like, around the chords where music's veil,
A mist raised from tune's ocean, duskly floats;
Or, fountained in the heart of nightingale,
With tide of murmurs swellest along her throat.
Sweet soother of my senses, flutter near,
Or sleep for ever in my charmed ear.





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