Rhyme

 Rhyme
in your clear chime
  we hear
ringing, far-off and clear,
in beauty's fairy granges
at evensong the changes
  and swells
and of her lost elfin-bells.

  You
glimmering through,
  astir,
wander a lamplighter,
kindling that lamp and this
of long-quenched memories
  with blaze
of their auto-da-fés.

  Numbers
the soul remembers,
  (and moved among them when
the Sons of Morning sung them)
you echo, while the dim
shadow of Seraphim
  half floats
among your muted notes.

  Tamer
of love's sweet grammar
  you parse,
and change, his nouns to stars,
his verbs you conjugate,
so that they vanish straight
  from time,
and lift - a moonlit paradeigm.

  Rhyme
by your clear chime
  we climb,
clean out of space and time,
and the small earth behind us
can neither lose nor find us,
  set free in your eternity.

Submitted by Emily Ezust [Administrator]

Authorship

• by Humbert Wolfe (1885 - 1940), "Rhyme", appears in The Unknown Goddess, first published 1925 [ author's text not yet checked against a primary source]

Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive)

• by Gustav Holst (1874 - 1934), "Rhyme", op. 48 no. 11, H. 174 no. 11 (1929), published 1930 [voice and piano], from Twelve Humbert Wolfe Songs, no. 11. [
   text verified 1 time
  ]

Text added to the website between May 1995 and September 2003.

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