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Poem Outlines

Chapter 11: SONGS OF ALDHELM
By Sidney Lanier
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Poetry

About This Book

The book gathers brief sketches, unfinished drafts, and lyrical fragments that reveal preoccupations with nature, music, and spiritual yearning. Short outlines and condensed images move from marshland observation and elemental forces to reflections on creative process, the struggles of artistic craft, and questions of faith. Occasional narrative openings and musical metaphors show an attempt to capture fleeting inspiration, while epigrammatic lines and hymnlike passages underline a blend of scientific curiosity and devotional feeling. Editorial notes situate these pieces as intimations of larger poems left in fragmentary form.

SONGS OF ALDHELM

Songs from the Sun, Songs from the ground,
Songs from the ... stars,
Songs, { fine souls of the body of sound,
  { joined souls and bodies of sound,
... ghosts of songs that died,
Songs of Birth and of Death, of ...
Beat million-rhythmed in the heart of my hearing,
The world is all sound and still signs of sound.
It appears that if I were perfect, I could not be perfect.
For with whoever is perfect, there is nothing more to be done.
But if there were nothing more to do, I would be very sorry: that is, I would not be perfect.
Therefore it appears that I would not be perfect if I were perfect.
[Credo, and Other Poems]
We know more than we know.
That the Lord is all, I know:
That I am part, I know.
But how shall we settle our provinces and diplomacies and boundaries, the Lord and I?
Let us talk of this matter, dear Lord, I talking in silence.
But the corruption, the rascality, the &c., &c.,
I am not afraid.
But the stock broker, the whiskey ring,
I am not afraid.
Nay, but the war in the East,
I am not afraid.
I see God about his godly affairs,
The cat-bird sits in the tree and sings
While the boy kills the &c. beneath.

The mocking-bird hanging over the street sings, though robbery, murder, fire, &c., go on.