 | Madrigals, songs and sonnets |  |
21
THE CRY OF THE UNSATISFIED.
O sing, sweet lark, some calmer, sadder song!Thy melody awakes
A grief unsuited to the dawn and thee;
My heart, my poor heart breaks!
Its pain doth foully wrong
The golden glory of the sun-lit sea;
The long fields sloping to the ridg'd sea-sand
Take up the light, and send it through the land.
Above their waving grain I hear and see,
Climbing the air with ardent wings,
Thy spirit-form that shouts and sings,
Enraptur'd with the joy the scarlet sunrise brings.
But I,
Forgetting all the morning-grace,
And hiding in the chill sand-drift my face,
22
Oh! whither art thou fled?
Be silent, lark, or soar so high
Thy notes may fade away and die;
Let, rather, from yon tamarisk-grove,
The nightingale, that lover-bird,
Sing low of unrequited love
In strains more sweet and sad than cold Earth ever heard!”
| Madrigals, songs and sonnets | |