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Death darkens his eyes, and unplumes his wings,
Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings:
read more
Death darkens his eyes, and unplumes his wings,
Yet the sweetest song is the last he sings:
Live so, my Love, that when death shall come,
Swan-like and sweet it may waft thee home.
There's a double beauty whenever a swan
Swims on a lake with her double thereon.
There's a double beauty whenever a swan
Swims on a lake with her double thereon.
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.]
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.
Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing save the waves and I
May hear our mutual read more
Place me on Sunium's marbled steep,
Where nothing save the waves and I
May hear our mutual murmurs sweep;
There, swan-like, let me sing and die.
Some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and read more
Some full-breasted swan
That, fluting a wild carol ere her death,
Ruffles her pure cold plume, and takes the flood
With swarthy webs.
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.
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.
