Under-Song

Lola Ridge 1873 – 1941



There is music in the strong
Deep-throated bush,
Whisperings of song
Heard in the leaves' hush -
Ballads of the trees
In tongues unknown -
A reminiscent tone
On minor keys…

Boughs swaying to and fro
Though no winds pass…
Faint odors in the grass
Where no flowers grow,
And flutterings of wings
And faint first notes,
Once babbled on the boughs
Of faded springs.

Is it music from the graves
Of all things fair
Trembling on the staves
Of spacious air -
Fluted by the winds
Songs with no words -
Sonatas from the throats
Of master birds?

One peering through the husk
Of darkness thrown
May hear it in the dusk -
That ancient tone,
Silvery as the light
Of long dead stars
Yet falling through the night
In trembling bars.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 sec read
84

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXAXBCCB DEEDFGXF HIHIXJGJ KCKCLMLM
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 702
Words 135
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 8, 8, 8, 8

Lola Ridge

Lola Ridge was an anarchist poet and an influential editor of avant-garde feminist and Marxist publications best remembered for her long poems and poetic sequences She along with other political poets of the early Modernist period has been coming under increasing critical scrutiny at the beginning of the twenty-first century more…

All Lola Ridge poems | Lola Ridge Books

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