The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) Selected and revised by the author. Copyright edition. In two volumes |
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| II. |
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THE CANTICLE OF LOVE. |
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| II. |
 | The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) |  |
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THE CANTICLE OF LOVE.
I
I heard an angel in the midnight sky,That made sweet singing to a golden lute.
The pole star, and the planets seven, and I
To his sweet singing did give audience mute;
Which, heard, made all things else to seem most sweet,
Such rapture was in those divine lute strings!
Such rapture, that Heaven's seraphs, about his feet,
Thrill'd to the bright ends of their burning wings.
‘The song he singeth,’ sigh'd those seraphs fair,
‘Is Love.’ But I have heard that song elsewhere.
II
For when I last was in the nethermost Hell,There, on a sulphurous headland wild, I heard
A spirit pale that, to a hollow shell,
The selfsame song was singing, word for word;
Which then so sadly sounded, its sad sound
Hell's aching heart did heave to deeper pain,
While fiends, with foreheads scarr'd, that crouch'd around
Drooping dark wings, made murmur . . . ‘Vain, ah, vain!’
Yet, moan'd those fiends ‘The song he singeth there
Is Love!’ But he that sung it was Despair.—
| The poems of Owen Meredith (Honble Robert Lytton.) | |