A Century of Roundels

Transcribed from the 1883 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
SECOND EDITION
London CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 1883
LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET
Songs light as these may sound, though deep and strong The heart spake through them, scarce should hope to please Ears tuned to strains of loftier thoughts than throng Songs light as these.
Yet grace may set their sometime doubt at ease, Nor need their too rash reverence fear to wrong The shrine it serves at and the hope it sees.
For childlike loves and laughters thence prolong Notes that bid enter, fearless as the breeze, Even to the shrine of holiest-hearted song, Songs light as these.
Goodnight and goodbye to the life whose signs denote us As mourners clothed with regret for the life gone by; To the waters of gloom whence winds of the dayspring float us Goodnight and goodbye.
A time is for mourning, a season for grief to sigh; But were we not fools and blind, by day to devote us As thralls to the darkness, unseen of the sundawn’s eye?
We have drunken of Lethe at length, we have eaten of lotus; What hurts it us here that sorrows are born and die? We have said to the dream that caressed and the dread that smote us Goodnight and goodbye.
Outside of the port ye are moored in, lying Close from the wind and at ease from the tide, What sounds come swelling, what notes fall dying Outside?