Stanzas For Music, Lord Byron

Details

Description

"Stanzas for Music" is a lyrical poem by Lord Byron, written to be set to music. This short, sixteen-line poem is divided into two octaves, each with a musical rhythm and structure. The poem is an ode to a beloved, whose beauty and voice are compared to enchanting natural phenomena like the stillness of the ocean under the moonlight.

Byron's use of vivid imagery and musical language creates a sense of transcendence and adoration. The beloved is described as having a magical presence that can calm the ocean and captivate the spirit. The poem's structure, with its rhyming couplets and quatrains, enhances its lyrical quality, making it a beautiful expression of intense, almost divine love.


There be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:

And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant's asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean.