| Andrew Macphail, comp. The Book of Sorrow. 1916. | | | XVII. Bereavement
Substitution | | By Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) |
| | | WHEN some belovèd voice that was to you | |
| Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly, | |
| And silence, against which you dare not cry, | |
| Aches round you like a strong disease and new— | |
| What hope? what help? what music will undo | 5 |
| That silence to your sense? Not friendship’s sigh. | |
| Not reason’s subtle count. Not melody | |
| Of viols, nor of pipes that Faunus blew. | |
| Not songs of poets, nor of nightingales, | |
| Whose hearts leap upward through the cypress trees | 10 |
| To the clear moon! nor yet the spheric laws | |
| Self-chanted,—nor the angels’ sweet All hails, | |
| Met in the smile of God. Nay, none of these. | |
| Speak THOU, availing Christ!—and fill this pause. | | | | |
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