The Dance of Death / Jane G. Austin

The Dance of Death

 
And now the old world holds high holiday
And pranks herself in garments brave and gay;
June roses burst from folded buds of May;
The air is full of perfume and of blithe birds' lay.
Come then, my heart, let us fare forth with these,
In all this joy dull sorrow finds surcease;
My sullen lute, beneath these blooming trees
And swept by fingers of the odorous breeze,
Sure thy mute strings will wake to life to-day
And sing to June a blithesome roundelay.

From out the wood there crept a shadow still,
Before it, died the sunshine off the hill;
It swept the lute, and on its icy breath
Faltered a song, a song of Love and Death.

O dance, ye rose-crowned hours of June,
    Beneath the merry sun,
And dance beneath the loving moon
    When jocund day is done.

Bright, bright, the sunshine and the moon
    But bitter black the shade:
Beneath thy roses, blithesome June,
    Are there no dead men laid?

Dim wraiths of dead and buried Junes,
    Sweet dreams and hearts aglow,
Of brighter suns and sweeter moons
    Of hopes dead long ago?

O joyous June, heap high your flowers,
    You cannot hide the graves beneath;
Sing, birds, and dance, ye merry hours,

    Tread with my ghosts the Dance of Death.

With one wild note of rapture or of pain
The lute-strings snapped and all was still again.

~~
Jane G. Austin (1831-1894)
from Through the Year with the Poets: May, 1886

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

FrDr, Danse Macabre (Tallinn). CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

[July]

Jane G. Austin biography