You Were Stay'd by Herbert Trench
You Were Stay'd is a short lyric in which the speaker addresses a dead beloved, whose heart was fixed on heaven and who has been taken to the Light, leaving the speaker forsaken. In a place of unbroken night, silence and darkened eyes, the speaker's soul sometimes sees old daylight and hears departed footsteps returning.
By Herbert Trench · First published 1901 · Genre: Lyric poetry, Elegiac poetry, Devotional poetry · 115 words
First lines
You were stay'd in heart on heaven, / I by none but you forgiven, -- / You unto your Light are taken, / I of all, in you, forsaken.
Where the night is never broken / Where for long no speech hath spoken, / There the ears no longer hearken, / There the eyeballs wane and darken.
Yet at hours my soul -- so bounded -- / By that gloom like blood surrounded -- / Sees in ancient daylight burning -- / Hears departed feet returning.
Similar titles
- Farewell To Nature by Thomas Gordon Hake
- Asleep by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Music In Hades by Francis Neilson
- The Remorse Of The Dead by Charles Pierre Baudelaire
- When I Think Of Thee Brother by Thomas Gordon Hake
- Upon A Dying Lady by W. B. Yeats
Genres
- Lyric poetry — Short, tightly rhymed stanzas voice one speaker's intense inner feeling and address a single beloved or divine 'you', which is the core mode of the poem.
- Elegiac poetry — The lament for a departed presence, the speaker's sense of being forsaken, and the image of departed feet returning center the poem on loss and absence, the defining concerns of elegy.
- Devotional poetry — Language of heaven, forgiveness, and being stayed in heart on heaven places the poem in the tradition of religious verse addressed to God.
- Symbolist poetry — Dense, suggestive imagery of night, gloom, blood-like darkness, light, and waning eyeballs evokes states of mind rather than narrating events, a hallmark of Symbolism.
Tags
lyric poetry · elegy · death of a beloved · grief · bereavement · loss · abandonment · heaven · afterlife · the Light · religious faith · devotional poetry
What this Textopian page supports
You Were Stay'd is listed on Textopian as a poem by Herbert Trench, dated 1901 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Herbert Trench
- Date: 1901 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric poetry, Elegiac poetry, Devotional poetry, Symbolist poetry, Mystical poetry
- Length: 115 words
- Structure: 1 section, 3 paragraphs
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