Sunday Whimsy

I have a confession to make...well not so much a confession, as I'm sure some of you will have sussed it out from a few previous posts....so it's more of a confirmation really....but I have something of a 'thing' for most things gothic; be it architecture, literature and on occasion even music. This kind of goes hand in hand with a love of ghost stories and the macabre, so this week has seen me trying to root out information on the almost forgotten Victorian author Count Eric Stenbock (1860-1895) who has been described by some as the father of gothic horror. As far as I can assertain, Stenbock has been the subject of just one rather dry biography in book form, now out of print and selling for a small fortune on specialist sites, so most of what I've been able to glean about the man has been found here;

http://www.mmhistory.org.uk/cce/Jo/index.htm

and from here;

http://homepages.pavilion.co.uk/users/tartarus/stenbock.htm

from which you can determine Stenbock appears to have been an eccentric and perhaps flawed man, but certainly never a dull one!

This weeks whimsy is a rendition of one of his poems, gloriously melodramatic and wonderously haunting....

Mine head upon thy lap, love, let me lie
I am wounded and without thee I shall die
Lull me and love me, love, till I am well
Gabriel

Turn on me sweetly till my soul have ease
Thine evening eyes that seem to breathe forth peace
Wherefrom the tender tears are quick to quell
Gabriel

Ah! for an everlasting afternoon
Lift not thine eyes, lest sunset come too soon
With the long tolling of the vesper bell
Gabriel

The sweet, slow, sleepy, solemn sounds that seem
Like incantations half heard in a dream
Or sad-eyed Siren singing some strange sea spell
Gabriel

Sing me to sleep while the long shadows wane
Sing to me the songs of childhood, come again
With thy sweet eyes that all ill thoughts repel
Gabriel

In blessing lay thine hands upon my head
Ah! would that with the sunset I were dead!
Having lived for one sweet hour, too sweet to tell
Gabriel

Living no longer than the lingering light
Seeing thy sweet eyes slowly sink from sight
While the slant shadows sound my dying knell
Gabriel