VILLANELLE.
[_]
(With a copy of Swinburne's Poems and Ballads. Second Series.)
THE thrush's singing days are fled;
His heart is dumb for love and pain:
The nightingale shall sing instead.
Too long the wood-bird's heart hath bled
With love and dole at every vein:
The thrush's singing days are fled.
The music in his breast is dead,
His soul will never flower again:
The nightingale shall sing instead.
Love's rose has lost its early red,
The golden year is on the wane;
The thrush's singing days are fled.
The years have beaten down his head,
He's mute beneath the winter's rain:
The nightingale shall sing instead.
Hard use hath snapped the golden thread
Of all his wild-wood songs in twain;
The thrush's singing days are fled.
His voice is dumb for drearihead:
What matters it? In wood and lane
The nightingale shall sing instead.
Sweet, weary not for what is sped.
What if, for stress of heart and brain,
The thrush's singing days are fled?
The nightingale shall sing instead.
