Song Be Delicate [poem by John Shaw Neilson]

[Editor: This poem by John Shaw Neilson was published in Heart of Spring (1919), Ballad and Lyrical Poems (1923), and Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (1934).]

Song Be Delicate

Let your song be delicate.
The skies declare
No war — the eyes of lovers
Wake everywhere.

Let your voice be delicate.
How faint a thing
Is Love, little Love crying
Under the Spring.

Let your song be delicate.
The flowers can hear:
Too well they know the tremble,
Of the hollow year.

Let your voice be delicate.
The bees are home:
All their day’s love is sunken
Safe in the comb.

Let your song be delicate.
Sing no loud hymn:
Death is abroad … oh, the black season!
The deep — the dim.

Source:
Shaw Neilson, Heart of Spring, Sydney: The Bookfellow, 1919, page 3

Also published in:
John Shaw Neilson, Ballad and Lyrical Poems, Sydney: Bookfellow in Australia, 1923, page 78
John Shaw Neilson (edited by R. H. Croll), Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson, Melbourne: Lothian Publishing Company, 1934, page 3

Editor’s notes:
In Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson (page 3) the last line is “The deep — the dim!”, ending with an exclamation mark, whereas in Heart of Spring and Ballad and Lyrical Poems the poem ends with a full stop.

comb = (in the context of bees) honeycomb

[Editor: Changed “All their days” to “All their day’s” (with regards to grammar, and in line with the poem as published in Ballad and Lyrical Poems and Collected Poems of John Shaw Neilson).]