Music: An Ode
By: Algernon Charles Swinburne
Contributed by: Craig Jones
WAS it light that spake
from the darkness,
or
music that shone from the word,
When the night was enkindled with sound
of
the sun or the first-born bird?
Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage
of
seasons that fall and rise,
Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh,
and
blinded with light that dies,
Lived not surely till music spake,
and
the spirit of life was heard.
Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be,
Smiled
as dawn on the spirit of man,
and the thrall was free.
Slave of nature and serf of time,
the
bondman of life and death,
Dumb with passionless patience that breathed
but
forlorn and reluctant breath,
Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer,
and
communed aloud with the sea.
Morning spake, and he heard:
and
the passionate silent noon
Kept for him not silence:
and
soft from the mounting moon
Fell the sound of her splendour,
heard
as dawn's in the breathless night,
Not of men but of birds whose note
bade
man's soul quicken and leap to light:
And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness
of
earth were as chords in tune.
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