WITHOUT surcease of breath Her soul hath slipped its sheath, And walks among us, beautiful, unafraid, So mortal eyes may see How immortality Transcends all beauty that must fail and fade. Colours of air and flame, The glory whence she came, Yet float about her in our dusty sphere. Silence and rapture still Brought from the heavenly hill, Whence she hath travelled to our exile drear. Slight as a lance she is, And tall as Lent lilies, Aspiring like a flame in windless air, Incense and breath of spice, Kept from her Paradise, Haunt her from slender feet to ebon hair. Lingering and lovely voice— Lutes, dulcimers, hautboys— Her voice remembers how the music went, Still holds the rise and fall, The sob ecstatical, Of some most heavenly-sweet wind instrument. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SEA UNICORNS AND LAND UNICORNS by MARIANNE MOORE THE LEPER by ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE LILIES: 4. BLOSSOMS ABOVE A TOMB by GEORGE BARLOW (1847-1913) THE CHILD AN' THE MOWERS by WILLIAM BARNES PSALM 113 by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE LYNTON VERSES: 2 by THOMAS EDWARD BROWN THE LAPSE OF TIME by WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT OBSERVATIONS IN THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY: 9. TROCHAIC VERSE: THE FIFTH EPIGRAM by THOMAS CAMPION TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 2. TO ONE WHO IS WHERE THE ETERNAL ARE by EDWARD CARPENTER |