Poems, Chiefly Lyrical/The Dying Swan

by Alfred Tennyson

For other versions of this work, see The Dying Swan.

THE DYING SWAN.

 

The plain was grassy, wild and bare,
Wide, wild, and open to the air,
Which had built up everywhere
An underroof of doleful grey.
With an inner voice the river ran,
Adown it floated a dying swan,
Which loudly did lament.
It was the middle of the day,
Ever the weary wind went on,
And took the reedtops as it went.

Some blue peaks in the distance rose,
And white against the cold-white sky,
Shone out their crowning snows.
One willow over the river wept,
And shook the wave as the wind did sigh;
Above in the wind sung the swallow,
Chasing itself at its own wild will,
And far through the marish green and still
The tangled watercourses slept,
Shot over with purple, and green, and yellow.

The wild swan's deathhymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear;
And floating about the undersky,
Prevailing in weakness, the coronach stole
Sometimes afar, and sometimes anear;
But anon her awful jubilant voice,
With a music strange and manifold,
Flowed forth on a carol free and bold:
As when a mighty people rejoice
With shawms, and with cymbals, and harps of gold,
And the tumult of their acclaim is rolled
Through the open gates of the city afar,
To the shepherd who watcheth the evening star.
And the creeping mosses and clambering weeds,
And the willowbranches hoar and dank,
And the wavy swell of the soughing reeds,
And the waveworn horns of the echoing bank,
And the silvery marishflowers that throng
The desolate creeks and pools among,
Were flooded over with eddying song.