Coal-black is better than another hue
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the read more

Coal-black is better than another hue
In that it scorns to bear another hue;
For all the water in the ocean
Can never turn the swan's black legs to white,
Although she lave them hourly in the flood.

The swan, like the soul of the poet,
By the dull world is ill understood.

The swan, like the soul of the poet,
By the dull world is ill understood.

You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am
infinitely inferior to the swans. When they read more

You think that upon the score of fore-knowledge and divining I am
infinitely inferior to the swans. When they perceive approaching
death they sing more merrily than before, because of the joy they
have in going to the God they serve.

I will play the swan,
And die in music.

I will play the swan,
And die in music.

We bodged again, as I have been a swan
With bootless labor swim against the tide
And read more

We bodged again, as I have been a swan
With bootless labor swim against the tide
And spend her strength with overmatching waves.

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at read more

The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul
Of that waste place with joy
Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear
The warble was low, and full and clear.

The swan is not without cause dedicated to Apollo, because
foreseeing his happiness in death, he dies with singing read more

The swan is not without cause dedicated to Apollo, because
foreseeing his happiness in death, he dies with singing and
pleasure.
[Lat., Cignoni non sine causa Apoloni dicata sint, quod ab eo
divinationem habere videantur, qua providentes quid in morte boni
sit, cum cantu et voluptate moriantur.]

The dying swan, when years her temples pierce,
In music-strains breathes out her life and verse,
And, read more

The dying swan, when years her temples pierce,
In music-strains breathes out her life and verse,
And, chanting her own dirge, tides on her wat'ry hearse.

Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue--the swan's down-feather
That read more

Her tongue will not obey her heart, nor can
Her heart inform her tongue--the swan's down-feather
That stands upon the swell at full of tide,
And neither way inclines.