Love too great for song
Silentium Amoris
"And for excess of Love my Love is dumb."
Poem
As often-times the too resplendent sunHurries the pallid and reluctant moonBack to her sombre cave, ere she hath wonA single ballad from the nightingale,So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,And all my sweetest singing out of tune.
And as at dawn across the level meadOn wings impetuous some wind will come,And with its too harsh kisses break the reedWhich was its only instrument of song,So my too stormy passions work me wrong,And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.
But surely unto Thee mine eyes did showWhy I am silent, and my lute unstrung;Else it were better we should part, and go,Thou to some lips of sweeter melody,And I to nurse the barren memoryOf unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.
In brief
SummaryThe speaker explains why love has brought silence instead of song. Just as a too-brilliant sun hurries the moon back to her cave before the nightingale can sing to her, the beloved's beauty makes the speaker's lips fail. Just as a harsh dawn wind breaks the reed it plays through, the speaker's stormy passions ruin the song they should produce: 'for excess of Love my Love is dumb'. Surely the beloved has read the reason in the speaker's eyes; if not, it is better to part, leaving only the memory 'Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung'.
Key themes
"So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,"
Summary
The first stanza builds a comparison from the sky. 'As often-times the too resplendent sun / Hurries the pallid and reluctant moon / Back to her sombre cave', before she has won 'A single ballad from the nightingale', so 'doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail, / And all my sweetest singing out of tune'.
The second stanza finds a second comparison in the fields. At dawn a wind comes 'On wings impetuous' across the level meadow and, 'with its too harsh kisses', breaks 'the reed / Which was its only instrument of song'. In the same way 'my too stormy passions work me wrong, / And for excess of Love my Love is dumb.'
The third stanza turns to the beloved directly. 'But surely unto Thee mine eyes did show / Why I am silent, and my lute unstrung'. If not, the speaker says, 'it were better we should part', the beloved going to 'some lips of sweeter melody', the speaker left to nurse 'the barren memory / Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung.'
Characters
The speaker
The silent lover
A poet-lover whose 'lute' is 'unstrung' because love is too strong to be put into song. The speaker trusts that the beloved can read the reason in their eyes, and is ready to part rather than be misunderstood.
The beloved
The beauty that silences
The one addressed as 'Thee', whose 'Beauty' makes the speaker's lips fail. The beloved never speaks, and the poem ends by imagining the beloved turning to 'some lips of sweeter melody' if the speaker's silence is not understood.
Themes
Silence from excess
The poem's paradox is that the speaker cannot sing because the feeling is too great. The beloved's 'Beauty' makes 'my lips to fail', and 'my too stormy passions work me wrong'. The key line, 'for excess of Love my Love is dumb', puts the idea in a single sentence: love has not faded into silence, it has overwhelmed the power of speech.
Nature's parallels
Each of the first two stanzas pairs an image from nature with the speaker's state. The 'too resplendent sun' hurries the moon away before the nightingale can sing to her; the dawn wind breaks, 'with its too harsh kisses', the very reed it plays through. Both images show a force too strong for the thing it loves, and the repeated 'too' makes the pattern plain.
What is lost
The final stanza counts the cost of this silence. If the beloved cannot read the speaker's eyes, they must part, and the beloved will find 'some lips of sweeter melody'. The speaker is left with 'the barren memory / Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung', a closing line that mourns things that never happened at all.
Quotes
"So doth thy Beauty make my lips to fail,"
The speaker
"Of unkissed kisses, and songs never sung."
The speaker
Context
'Silentium Amoris', Latin for 'the silence of love', appears in the 'Fourth Movement' section of Wilde's collected poems. It has three six-line stanzas: the first two are each built as a single 'As... so' comparison drawn from nature, and the third speaks directly to the beloved.
About this edition
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