Astrophel and Other Poems/Music: an Ode

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

MUSIC: AN ODE.

I.

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.

II.

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.

III.

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.

Layout 2