All Sung

What shall I sing when all is sung,
And every tale is told,
And in the world is nothing young
That was not long since old?

Why should I fret unwilling ears
With old things sung anew,
While voices from the old dead years
Still go on singing too?

A dead man singing of his maid
Makes all my rhymes in vain,
Yet his poor lips must fade and fade,
And mine shall kiss again.

Why should I strive through weary moons
To make my music true?
Only the dead men knew the tunes
The live world dances to.

Richard Le Gallienne

Richard Le Gallienne was an English author and poet born on January 20, 1866. Known for his lyrical poetry, he was a key figure in the literary circles of the fin de siècle. He contributed to the literary magazine 'The Yellow Book' and was involved with the Rhymers' Club, an influential group of London-based poets. His works often explored themes of beauty, love, and nature. His influence extended to both sides of the Atlantic, and he spent the latter part of his life in the United States, where he continued to write until his death on September 15, 1947.

Richard Le Gallienne

The Lonely Dancer

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

I Crossed The Orchard Walking Home

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

Morality

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

The Long Purposes Of God

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Song That Lasts

Songs I sang of lordly matters,
Life and death, and stars and sea;
Nothing of them now remains
But the song I sang for thee.

Vain the learned elaborate metres,
Vain the deeply pondered line;
All the rest are dust and ashes
But that little song of thine.

Richard Le Gallienne

Robert Louis Stevenson - An Elegy

High on his Patmos of the Southern Seas
Our northern dreamer sleeps,
Strange stars above him, and above his grave
Strange leaves and wings their tropic splendours wave,
While, far beneath, mile after shimmering mile,
The great Pacific, with its faery deeps,
Smiles all day long its silken secret smile.

Son of a race nomadic, finding still
Its home in regions furthest from its home,
Ranging untired the borders of the world,
And resting but to roam;
Loved of his land, and making all his boast
The birthright of the blood from which he came,
Heir to those lights that guard the Scottish coast,
And caring only for a filial fame;
Proud, if a poet, he was Scotsman most,
And bore a Scottish name.

Death, that long sought our poet, finds at last,
Dea...

Richard Le Gallienne

A Song Of Singers

Singers all along the street,
Singing every kind of song -
One man's song is honey-sweet,
One man's song is hammer-strong;
Yet, however sweet the singing,
However strong the hammer-swinging, -
All the bees are round that honey
Which the vulgar world calls money.

Singers all along the street -
One sings Love and one sings Death,
Roses sings one and little feet,
And one sings wine with fevered breath;
Yet all the bees are round that honey
Which the vulgar world calls money.

Singers singing down the street,
I believe there is a song,
Could you sing it, that would beat
All the sweet and all the strong;
Just a simple song of pity,
'Mid the iron of the city.

Singers all the street along,
There is still another song
All...

Richard Le Gallienne

Singing Go I

Singing go I, seeking for ever a song
    Sung long ago; I ask no more to hear
Her voice that sang - for I should do her wrong,
    Had I the power, to bring her once more near -

Near to the earth, its sorrow or its joy,
    To drag her back into the arms of pain
    And Love and all the April flowers again
And all her little dreams of heaven destroy.

Have I the heart? Ah! had I but the song,
The nightingale would listen and all things
That talk in waterfalls and trees and strings
Would hush themselves to listen as I sang,
    Had I the song.

Richard Le Gallienne

Love-Laurel

(In Memory of Henry Kendall)


Ah! that God once would touch my lips with song
To pierce, as prayer doth heaven, earths breast of iron,
So that with sweet mouth I might sing to thee,
O sweet dead singer buried by the sea,
A song, to woo thee, as a wooing siren,
Out of that silent sleep which seals too long
Thy mouth of melody.

For, if live lips might speak awhile to dead,
Or any speech could reach the sad world under
This world of ours, song surely should awake
Thee who didst dwell in shadow for songs sake!
Alas! thou canst not hear the voice of thunder,
Nor low dirge over thy low-lying head
The winds of morning make.

Down through the clay there comes no sound of these;
Down in the grave there is no sign of Summer,
Nor any knowledg...

Victor James Daley

Young Love I - "Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon"

N.B. - This sequence of poems has appeared in former editions under the title of 'Love Platonic.'


I

1
Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon
That bringeth in the happy singing weather
Groweth to pearly queendom, and full soon
Shall Love and Song go hand in hand together;
For all the pain that all too long hath waited
In deep dumb darkness shall have speech at last,
And the bright babe Death gave the Love he mated
Shall leap to light and kiss the weeping past.

For all the silver morning is a-glimmer
With gleaming spears of great Apollo's host,
And the night fadeth like a spent out swimmer
Hurled from the headlands of some shining coast.
O, happy soul, thy mouth at last is singing,
Drunken with wine of morning's azure deep,
Si...

Richard Le Gallienne