"Sing to me," she said. "That would be valiant, to raise your voice in this dark, lonely place, and it will be useful as well. Sing to me, sing loudly-drown out my dreams, keep me from remembering whatever wants me to remember it. Sing to me, my lord prince, if it please you. It may not seem a hero's task, but I would be glad of it."

Eventually, decades later, when the king was dying, the queen gently ushered everybody out into the corridor, closed the door to the royal bedchamber, and got into bed with her husband. She started singing to him. They laughed. He was short of breath, but he could still laugh. They asked each other, Is this silly? Is this...pretentious? But they both knew that everything there was to say had been said already, over and over, across the years. And so the king, relieved, released, free to be silly, asked her to sing him a song from his childhood. He didn't need to be regal anymore, he didn't need to seem commanding or dignified, not with her. They were, in their way, dying together, and they both knew it. It wasn't happening only to him. So she started singing. They shared one last laugh - they agreed that the cat had a better voice than she did. Still, she sang him out of the world.

There was a man with tongue of wood
Who essayed to sing,
And in truth it was lamentable.
But there was one who heard
The clip-clapper of this tongue of wood
And knew what the man
Wished to sing,
And with that the singer was content.

"I should think that to hear such lovely music as that would really make him feel better."
The lady gave a discriminating smile.
“I am afraid there are moments in life when even Beethoven has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they are our worst moments.

or else I would have sung a song
in response to what the male sex sings.
For our lengthy past has much to say
about men's lives as well as ours

One must always have a song in the heart.” “And an éclair in the hand,

His hand took hold of hers, and as she said something low in his ear he turned toward her with a rush of emotion. I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed — that voice was a deathless song.

He is happy whom the Muses love. For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles.

She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.

She would tell him what she wanted in her life — her hopes and dreams for the future — and he would listen intently and then promise to make it all come true. And the way he said it made her believe him, and she knew how much he meant to her.

There was no one else like him alive.
In his day, he was the mightiest man on earth,
high-born and powerful. He ordered a boat
that would ply the waves. He announced his plan:
to sail the swan’s road and search out that king,
the famous prince who needed defenders.

Demon or bird! (said the boy’s soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it mostly to me?
For I, that was a child, my tongue’s use sleeping,
Now I have heard you,
Now in a moment I know what I am for — I awake, 150
And already a thousand singers — a thousand songs, clearer, louder and more sorrowful than yours,
A thousand warbling echoes have started to life within me,
Never to die.

O you singer, solitary, singing by yourself — projecting me;
O solitary me, listening — nevermore shall I cease perpetuating you; 155
Never more shall I escape, never more the reverberations,
Never more the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me,
Never again leave me to be the peaceful child I was before what there, in the night,
By the sea, under the yellow and sagging moon,
The messenger there arous’d — the fire, the sweet hell within, 160
The unknown want, the destiny of me.

23 He dreamed that a bomb was singing to him. From far away, the bomb was coming to marry him. The bomb was his destiny, falling on him, screaming.

I think that voice held him most, with its fluctuating, feverish warmth, because it couldn’t be over-dreamed — that voice was a deathless song.