But Sing Again, Oh You Who Have the Heart

For they who fashion songs must live too close to pain,
Acquaint themselves too well with grief and tears:
Must make the slow, deep, throbbing pulse of years
And their own heartbeats one; watch the slow train
Of passing autumns paint their scarlet stain
Upon the hills, and learn that beauty sears.
The whole world’s woe and heartbreak must be theirs,
And theirs each vision smashed, each new dream slain.

But sing again, oh you who have the heart,
Sweet songs as fragile as a passing breath,
Although your broken heartstrings make your lyre,
And each pure strain must rend the soul apart;
For it was ever thus: to sing is death;
And in your spirit flames your body’s pyre.

--"Weltschmerz" by Frank Yerby

This entry was posted by Richard Beck. Bookmark the permalink.

2 thoughts on “But Sing Again, Oh You Who Have the Heart”

  1. Thank you for posting this poem. I will be coming back to it to ponder it often. I think this poem is saying a lot, through several layers that all deserve attention.


    At the end of my father's life, as he suffered from Parkinson's, and the whole family suffered watching him go through it, sometimes my niece would sing Robert Lowry's hymn "How Can I Keep From Singing" to him (words below). While neither my father nor my niece were composing ("fashioning") the song, just singing it and hearing it was a form of fashioning, I think. Song helps those of us who "live too close to pain" to bear it, and then we can sing again.

    My life flows on in endless song, above earth’s lamentation.
    I hear the clear though far-off hymn that hails a new creation.
    No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging.
    Since love is Lord of heav’n and earth, how can I keep from singing?


    Through all the tumult and the strife, I hear that music ringing.
    It finds an echo in my soul. How can I keep from singing?
    No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging.
    Since love is Lord of heav’n and earth, how can I keep from singing?


    What though my joys and comforts die? I know my Savior liveth.
    What though the darkness gather round? Songs in the night he giveth.
    No storm can shake my inmost calm while to that Rock I’m clinging.
    Since love is Lord of heav’n and earth, how can I keep from singing?

    - Words and Music by Robert Lowry, 1869.

  2. Beautiful. I always love your poetry shares Richard, and can never resist posing a companion piece. This one immediately bought to mind 'The Sirens' by Richard Wilbur:

    I never knew the road
    From which the whole earth didn't call away,
    With wild birds rounding the hill crowns,
    Haling out of the heart an old dismay,
    Or the shore somewhere pounding its slow code,
    Or low-lighted towns
    Seeming to tell me, stay.

    Lands I have never seen
    And shall not see, loves I will not forget
    All I have missed, or slighted, or foregone
    Call to me now. And weaken me. And yet
    I would not walk a road without a scene.
    I listen going on,
    The richer for regret.

Leave a Reply