Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, SORGENDO DA LUNA, by WILLIAM SHARP


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

SORGENDO DA LUNA, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: No sound / save the hush'd breath
Last Line: And falleth.
Alternate Author Name(s): Macleod, Fiona
Subject(s): Death; Life; Rome, Italy; Time; Dead, The


No sound,
Save the hush'd breath,
The slowly flowing,
The long and low withdrawing breath of Rome.
Not a leaf quivers, where the dark,
With eyes of rayless shadow and moonlit hair,
Dreams in the black
And hollow cavernous depth of the ilex-trees.
No sound,
Save the hush'd breath of Rome,
And sweet and fresh and clear
The bubbling, swaying, ever quavering jet
Of water fill'd with pale nocturnal gleams,
That, in the broad low fount,
Falleth,
Falleth and riseth,
Riseth and falleth, swayeth and surgeth; ever
A spring of life and joy where ceaselessly
The shadow of two sovran powers make
A terror without fear, a night that hath no dark,
Time, with his sunlit wings,
Death, with his pinions vast and duskily dim:
Time, breathing vanishing life:
Death, breathing low
From twilights of Oblivion whence Time rose
A wild and wandering star forlornly whirled,
Seen for a moment, ere for ever lost.
Up from the marble fount
The water leaps,
Sways in the moonshine, springeth, springeth,
Falleth and riseth,
Like sweet faint lapping music,
Soft gurgling notes of woodland brooks that wander
Low laughing where the hollowed stones are green
With slippery moss that hath a trickling sound:
Leapeth and springeth,
Singing forever
A wayward song.
While the vast wings of Time and Death drift slowly,
While, faint and far, the tides of life
Sigh in a long scarce audible breath from Rome,
Or faintlier still withdraw down shores of dusk;
For ever singing
It leapeth and falleth:
Falleth and leapeth,
Falleth,
And falleth.





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