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

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 Silk-Hat Soldier

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

A Rainy Day

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

Robert Louis Stevenson - An Elegy

Richard Le Gallienne, Simple Poetry

Young Love XVII - "Canst thou be true across so many miles,"

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.

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

To A Bird At Dawn

O bird that somewhere yonder sings,
    In the dim hour 'twixt dreams and dawn,
Lone in the hush of sleeping things,
    In some sky sanctuary withdrawn;
Your perfect song is too like pain,
And will not let me sleep again.

I think you must be more than bird,
    A little creature of soft wings,
Not yours this deep and thrilling word -
    Some morning planet 'tis that sings;
Surely from no small feathered throat
    Wells that august, eternal note.

As some old language of the dead,
    In one resounding syllable,
Says Rome and Greece and all is said -
    A simple word a child may spell;
So in your liquid note impearled
Sings the long epic of the world.

Unfathomed sweetness of your song,
    With ancient anguish at its core,

Richard Le Gallienne

An Old Love Letter

I was reading a letter of yours to-day,
The date - O a thousand years ago!
The postmark is there - the month was May:
How, in God's name, did I let you go?
What wonderful things for a girl to say!
And to think that I hadn't the sense to know -
What wonderful things for a man to hear!
O still beloved, O still most dear.

"Duty" I called it, and hugged the word
Close to my side, like a shirt of hair;
You laughed, I remember, laughed like a bird,
And somehow I thought that you didn't care.
Duty! - and Love, with her bosom bare!
No wonder you laughed, as we parted there -
Then your letter came with this last good-by -
And I sat splendidly down to die.

Nor Duty, nor Death, would have aught of me:
"He is Love's," they said, "he cannot be ours;"
...

Richard Le Gallienne

Alfred Tennyson

(Westminster, October 12, 1892)

Great man of song, whose glorious laurelled head
    Within the lap of death sleeps well at last,
Down the dark road, seeking the deathless dead,
    Thy faithful, fearless, shining soul hath passed.

Fame blows his silver trumpet o'er thy sleep,
    And Love stands broken by thy lonely lyre;
So pure the fire God gave this clay to keep,
    The clay must still seem holy for the fire.

Poor dupes of sense, we deem the close-shut eye,
    So faithful servant of his golden tongue,
Still holds the hoarded lights of earth and sky,
    We deem the mouth still full of sleeping song.

We mourn as though the great good song he gave
    Passed with the singer's own informing breath:
Ah, golden book, for thee there is no gr...

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

Young Love III - "But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,"

But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,
Nor twitter robin-like of love, nor sing
A pretty dalliance with grief - but try
Some metre like a sky,
Wherein to set
Stars that may linger yet
When I, thy master, shall have come to die.
        Twitter and tweet
            Thy carollings
            Of little things,
        Of fair and sweet;
        For it is meet,
            O robin red!
        That little theme
            Hath little song,
            That little head
        Hath little dream,
            And long.
But we have starry business, such a grief
As Autumn's, dead by some forgotten sheaf,
While all the distance echoes of the wain;
Grief as an ocean's for some sudden isle
Of living green that stayed with it a while,

Richard Le Gallienne