 | Musa Verticordia |  |
86
“IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH”
When you in sickness lie,
No more the field is green, nor blue the sky;
No more invisible and lovely things
The forest haunt with songs and rustling wings;
Back from my stricken sense the world recedes,
And beauty's garden is a patch of weeds.
No more the field is green, nor blue the sky;
No more invisible and lovely things
The forest haunt with songs and rustling wings;
Back from my stricken sense the world recedes,
And beauty's garden is a patch of weeds.
Then can I catch in music's blithest tone
Nought but the closing cadence of a moan;
Then can I joy no more in sound unheard
Save in the silence of the written word;
The melodies that once could charm my ear
Forebode some final dissonance of fear.
Nought but the closing cadence of a moan;
Then can I joy no more in sound unheard
Save in the silence of the written word;
The melodies that once could charm my ear
Forebode some final dissonance of fear.
87
Earth has no health, when health from you is fled;
No angel stands between the quick and dead;
The awful unity of life and death
Is sacramental in your labouring breath;
And as I watch you I can hear Him call
Who is the King of Nothing or of All.
No angel stands between the quick and dead;
The awful unity of life and death
Is sacramental in your labouring breath;
And as I watch you I can hear Him call
Who is the King of Nothing or of All.
But ah! your nature surely cannot owe
To that grim tyrant such an overthrow;
You seem a creature of an alien strain
From force and fate, and unallied to pain;
Could you but meet their Master, little while
Would lapse ere you had won him to a smile.
To that grim tyrant such an overthrow;
You seem a creature of an alien strain
From force and fate, and unallied to pain;
Could you but meet their Master, little while
Would lapse ere you had won him to a smile.
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