Wallace Stevens - Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz lyrics
[Wallace Stevens - Sad Strains of a Gay Waltz lyrics]
The truth is that there comes a time
When we can mourn no more over music
That is so much motionless sound
There comes a time when the waltz
Is no longer a mode of desire, a mode
Of revealing desire and is empty of shadows
Too many waltzes have ended and then
There’s that mountain-minded Hoon
For whom desire was never that of the waltz
Who found all form and order in solitude
For whom the shapes were never
The figures of men
Now, for him, his forms have vanished
There is order in neither sea nor sun
The shapes have lost their glistening
There are these sudden mobs of men
These sudden clouds of faces and arms
An immense suppression, freed
These voices crying without knowing for what
Except to be happy, without knowing how
Imposing forms they cannot describe
Requiring order beyond their speech
Too many waltzes have ended yet the shapes
For which the voices cry, these, too, may be
Modes of desire, modes of revealing desire
Too many waltzes The epic of disbelief
Blares oftener and soon
Will soon be constant
Some harmonious skeptic soon in
A skeptical music
Will unite these figures of
Men and their shapes
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows
When we can mourn no more over music
That is so much motionless sound
There comes a time when the waltz
Is no longer a mode of desire, a mode
Of revealing desire and is empty of shadows
Too many waltzes have ended and then
There’s that mountain-minded Hoon
For whom desire was never that of the waltz
Who found all form and order in solitude
For whom the shapes were never
The figures of men
Now, for him, his forms have vanished
There is order in neither sea nor sun
The shapes have lost their glistening
There are these sudden mobs of men
These sudden clouds of faces and arms
An immense suppression, freed
These voices crying without knowing for what
Except to be happy, without knowing how
Imposing forms they cannot describe
Requiring order beyond their speech
Too many waltzes have ended yet the shapes
For which the voices cry, these, too, may be
Modes of desire, modes of revealing desire
Too many waltzes The epic of disbelief
Blares oftener and soon
Will soon be constant
Some harmonious skeptic soon in
A skeptical music
Will unite these figures of
Men and their shapes
Will glisten again with motion, the music
Will be motion and full of shadows