The lights that across the dark water Make music that never is heard -- Such tones as no artist has sought, or Is sung by that so solemn bird -- Touch ripples of color commingled By fingers unfelt on the keys With zephyrs that seraphs have singled For seraphs' seraphical seas. The mere nestles down like a jewel, The hills loom up hard in the sky With rough rugged pine trees and cruel -- Subdued now with night drawing nigh. And cloud-forms since times that are olden Transfigure horizons in death With cerements once crimson and golden, Now sable in shadowless breath. Ah, heart of my heart, what suffices, What means all this riddle of things? Are virtues distinguished from vices And love's so insatiable stings? What means all this measured emotion, What means all our rapturous tears If all this so dulcet devotion Must die with the day in its fears? | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A SONG OF PANAMA by ALFRED DAMON RUNYON THE EARLY PRIMROSE by HENRY KIRKE WHITE EASTER 1916 by WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS RODGERSON'S DOUG by WILLIAM AITKEN STANZAS ADDRESSED TO PERCY BYSSHE SHELLY by BERNARD BARTON THE IVY; ADDRESSED TO A YOUNG FRIEND by BERNARD BARTON |