To Beethoven
Sidney Lanier
In o'er-strict calyx lingering,
Lay music's bud too long unblown,
Till thou, Beethoven, breathed the spring:
Then bloomed the perfect rose of tone.
O Psalmist of the weak, the strong,
O Troubadour of love and strife,
Co-Litanist of right and wrong,
Sole Hymner of the whole of life,
I know not how, I care not why, --
Thy music sets my world at ease,
And melts my passion's mortal cry
In satisfying symphonies.
It soothes my accusations sour
'Gainst thoughts that fray the restless soul:
The stain of death; the pain of power;
The lack of love 'twixt part and whole;
The yea-nay of Freewill and Fate,
Whereof both cannot be, yet are;
The praise a poet wins too late
Who starves from earth into a star;
The lies that serve great parties well,
While truths but give their Christ a cross;
The loves that send warm souls to hell,
While cold-blood neuters take no loss;
Th' indifferent smile that nature's grace
On Jesus, Judas, pours alike;
Th' indifferent frown on nature's face
When luminous lightnings strangely strike
The sailor praying on his knees
And spare his mate that's cursing God;
How babes and widows starve and freeze,
Yet Nature will not stir a clod;
Why Nature blinds us in each act
Yet makes no law in mercy bend,
No pitfall from our feet retract,
No storm cry out `Take shelter, friend;'
Why snakes that crawl the earth should ply
Rattles, that whoso hears may shun,
While serpent lightnings in the sky,
But rattle when the deed is done;
How truth can e'er be good for them
That have not eyes to bear its strength,
And yet how stern our lights condemn
Delays that lend the darkness length;
To know all things, save knowingness;
To grasp, yet loosen, feeling's rein;
To waste no manhood on success;
To look with pleasure upon pain;
Though teased by small mixt social claims,
To lose no large simplicity,
And midst of clear-seen crimes and shames
To move with manly purity;
To hold, with keen, yet loving eyes,
Art's realm from Cleverness apart,
To know the Clever good and wise,
Yet haunt the lonesome heights of Art;
O Psalmist of the weak, the strong,
O Troubadour of love and strife,
Co-Litanist of right and wrong,
Sole Hymner of the whole of life,
I know not how, I care not why,
Thy music brings this broil at ease,
And melts my passion's mortal cry
In satisfying symphonies.
Yea, it forgives me all my sins,
Fits life to love like rhyme to rhyme,
And tunes the task each day begins
By the last trumpet-note of Time.
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Here Are Our Top Love Poems...
Love Poems 1
I Would Live in Your Love
by Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
Love Poems 2
Sonnet From the Portuguese V
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)
Love Poems 3
The Bungler
by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
Love Poems 4
Blue and White
by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861-1907)
Love Poems 5
Desideria
by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Love Poems 6
The Taxi
by Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
Love Poems 7
Daffodils
by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Love Poems 8
Song
by Sir William Watson (1858-1935)
Love Poems 9
To a Butterfly
by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Love Poems 10
Sonnet From the Portuguese V
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61)
Love Poems 11
She Tells Her Love by Robert Ranke Graves
Love Poems 12
It's all I have to bring to-day by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 13
I Never Lost As Much by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 14
Heart, We Will Forget Him by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 15
O Mistress Mine by William Shakespeare
Love Poems 16
The Rose in the Deeps of his Heart by William Butler Yeats
Love Poems 17
Love by Robert Browning
Love Poems 18
My Pretty Rose Tree by William Blake
Love Poems 19
I Should Not Dare by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 20
One Day I Wrote Her Name by Edmund Spenser
Love Poems 21
Tell me not, Sweet, by Richard Lovelace
Love Poems 22
The Dream by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love Poems 23
The Dream by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love Poems 24
Hope is a Thing With Feathers by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 25
We Are Seven by William Wordsworth
Love Poems 26
Mag by Carl Sandburg
Love Poems 27
Ebb by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Love Poems 28
I Sing by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 29
For Each Ecstatic Instant by Emily Dickinson
Love Poems 30
Love Not Me by John Wilbye
Love Poems 31
Mild Is The Parting Year by Walter Savage Landor