Something more wonderful assails the soul,
As, with exultant cries, up-curving, swift,
The shrill Walküre clamor against the sky,
Or pale Brünhilde moans her bitter fate.

WAGNER

THIS is the eternal mystery of art:

He told the secretest secret of his heart

How many mortals, with quick-flaming brow, Whispered, "Lo, this am I and that art thou!"

"THE PATHETIC SYMPHONY”

(TSCHAIKOWSKY)

WHEN the last movement fell, I thought: Ah, me!
Death this indeed; but still the music poured
On and still on. O, deathlier it grew,

And then, at last, my beating heart stood still—
Beyond all natural grief the music passing,

Beyond all tragedy, or last farewell.

Then, on that fatal tide, dismayed I felt
This living soul, my own, without one tear,

Slowly, irrevocably, and alone,

Enter the ultimate silence and the dark.

MACDOWELL

REJOICE! Rejoice!

The New World hath a voice;
A voice of tragedy and mirth,
Sounding clear through all the earth;
A voice of music, tender and sublime,
Kin to the master-music of all time.

A FANTASY OF CHOPIN

Hear ye, and know,

389

While the chords throb with poignant pause and flow,

Of the New World the mystic, lyric heart,

Breathed in undaunted art:

Her pomp of days, her glittering nights;

The rich surprise

And miracle of iridescent skies;

Her lovely lowlands and imperial hights;

Her glooms and gladness;

Her oceans thundering on a thousand shores;

Her wild-wood madness;

Her streams adream with memory that deplores

The red inhabitants evanished and undone

That follow, follow to far lands beyond the setting

sun.

And echoes one may hear of ancient lores

From the Old World's well-loved shores-
Primal loves, and quenchless hates;
Striving lives, and conquering fates;
Elves innocently antic

Or wild-eyed, frantic;

Shadow-heroes, passionate, gigantic

Sons and daughters of the prime

That moved the mighty bards to noble rhyme.

Rejoice! Rejoice!

The New World hath new music, and a voice.

A FANTASY OF CHOPIN

(GABRILOWITSCH)

LIGHTNINGS and tremblings and a voice of thunder;

But when the winds are down, and spent the showers At the vast mountain's base, the sheer cliffs under, How sweet the summer flowers!

"HOW STRANGE THE MUSICIAN'S MEMORY"

How strange the musician's memory, never wrong
In symphony, sonata, fugue, or song!

Sees he the score with wide, unseeing eyes,
Or is it sound his heart doth memorize?
What is it like? Behold, from out the west,
The long light on the wild wave's flying crest.
See the swift gleam rush up the leaning strand
And die in foam upon the singing sand.

"IN A NIGHT OF MIDSUMMER"

In a night of midsummer, on the still eastern shore of the ocean inlet,

In our hearts a sense of the inaudible pulsings of the unseen, infinite sea,

Suddenly through the clear, cool air, arose the voice of a wonderful tenor; soaring and sobbing in the music of "Otello."

I knew that the singer was long dead; I knew well that it was not his living voice;

And yet truly it was as the voice of a living man; tho' heard as through a veil, still was it human; still was it living; still was it tragic;

Still felt I the fire of the spirit of a man; I was moved by the passion of his art; I perceived the flower and essence of his person; the exquisite expression of his mind and soul;

His soul it was that seized my soul, through his voice, which was as the very voice of sorrow;

And then I thought: If man, by science and searching, can build a cunning instrument that takes over and keeps, beyond the term of human existence, the essence and flower of a man's art;

JOHN PAUL JONES

391

If he can recreate that most individual attribute, his articulate and musical voice, and thus the very art and passion which that voice conveys,

Why may not the Supreme Artificer, when the human body is utterly dissolved and dispersed, recover and keep forever, in some new and delicate structure, the living soul itself?

IN THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

MOUNTAINS in whose vast shadows live great names,
On whose firm pillars rest mysterious dawns,
And sunsets that redream the apocalypse;
A world of billowing green that, veil on veil,
Turns a blue mist and melts in lucent skies;
A silent world, save for slow waves of wind,
Or sudden, hollow clamor of huge rocks
Beaten by valleyed waters manifold; -
Airs that to breathe is life and joyousness;
Days dying into music; nights whose stars
Shine near, and large, and lustrous; these, O these,
These are for memory to life's ending hour.

JOHN PAUL JONES

I

BEHOLD our first great warrior of the sea
Who, in our war to make the half world free,
His knightly sword in noble anger drew!
Born to the Old, he visioned clear the New.

II

Born to the New - and shall we lose our faith

And mourn for freedom as a fleeing wraith?
Or heroes swift as he, and valorous, find
In bloodless battles of the unfettered mind!

TO EMMA LAZARUS

(1905)

DEAR bard and prophet, that thy rest is deep Thanks be to God! Not now on thy heart falls Rumor intolerable. Sleep, O sleep!

See not the blood of Israel that crawls,

Warm yet, into the noon and night; that cries
Even as of old, till all the world stands still
At rapine that even to Israel's agonies
Seems strange and monstrous, a mad dream of ill.
Thou sleepest! Yea, but as in grief we said:
There is a spiritual life unconquerable;

So, bard of the ancient people, tho' being dead
Thou speakest, and thy voice we love full well.
Never thy holy memory forsakes us;
Thy spirit is the trumpet that awakes us!

CARL SCHURZ

IN youth he braved a monarch's ire
To set the people's poet free;
Then gave his life, his fame, his fire
To the long praise of liberty.

His life, his fame, his all he gave

That not on earth should live one slave;

True freedom of the soul he sought

And in that battle well he fought.

He fought, and yet he loved not war,
But looked and labored for the day.
When the loud cannon silent are

And holy peace alone hath sway.