Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DIVISIONS ON A GROUND: 3, by ARTHUR WILLIAM SYMONS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DIVISIONS ON A GROUND: 3, by             Poet's Biography
First Line: Let me hear music, for I am not sad
Last Line: Only of all your voices upon earth.


Let me hear music, for I am not sad,
But half in love with sadness. To dream so,
And dream, and so forget the dream, and so
Dream I am dreaming! This old little voice,
Which pants and flutters in the clavichord,
Has the bird's wings in it, and women's tears,
The dust has drunken long ago, and sighs
As of a voiceless crying of old love
That died and never spoke; and then the soul
Of one who sought for wisdom; and these cry
Out of the disappointment of the grave.
And something, in the old and little voice,
Calls from so farther off than far away,
I tremble, hearing it, lest it draw me forth,
This flickering self, desiring to be gone,
Into the boundless and abrupt abyss
Whereat begins infinity; and there
This flickering self wander eternally
Among the soulless, uncreated winds
Which storm against the barriers of the world.
But most I hear the pleading and sad voice
Of beauty, sad because it cannot speak
Out of harsh stones and out of evil noise,
And out of thwarted faces, and the gleam
Of things corrupted, and all ruinous things.
This is the voice that cries, and would be heard,
And can but speak in music. Venerable
And ageless beauty of the world, whose breath
Is life in all things, I have seen your form
In cloud, and grass, and wave, and glory of man,
Flawless, but I have heard your very voice
Here only, here only human, and here sad
Only of all your voices upon earth.





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