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Poetry · Poem

For Music

George Gordon Byron, Lord ByronEnglish RomanticismPoem
SOURCE TEXT · English original
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 charmèd 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.
Cultural reading

Reading the poem

The speaker tells the addressee that their voice works like music over water, holding the waves still and the winds dreaming, so that the listening spirit bows in adoration while the midnight moon lies on a gently breathing sea.

Language notes

Text and edition

The English text follows the fixed historical witness in The Oxford Book of English Verse; no modern third-party translation is included.