THIS day I heard such music that I thought:
Hath human speech the power thus to be wrought,
Into such melody,-pure, sensuous sound, -
Into such mellow, murmuring mazes caught;
Can words (I said), when these keen tones are bound (Silent, except in memory of this hour)
Can human words alone usurp the power
Of trembling strings that thrill to the very soul,
And of this ecstasy bring back the whole?
Ah, no ('t was answered in my inmost heart),
Unto itself sufficient is each art,
And each doth utter what none other can
Some hidden mood of the large soul of man.
Ah, think not thou with words well interweaved
To wake the tones wherein the viol grieved
With its most heavy burden; think not thou,
Adventurous, to push thy shallop's prow
Into that surge of well-remembered tones,
Striving to match each wandering wind that moans,
Each bell that tolls, and every bugle's blowing
With some most fitting word, some verse bestowing
A never-shifting form on that which past
Swift as a bird that glimmers down the blast.
So, still unworded, save in memory mute,
Rest thou sweet hour of viol and of lute;
Of thoughts that never, never can be spoken,
Too frail for the rough usage of men's words
Thoughts that shall keep their silence all unbroken
Till music once more stirs them; then like birds
That in the night-time slumber, they shall wake,
While all the leaves of all the forest shake.
O, hark! I hear it now, that tender strain
Fulfilled with all of sorrow save its pain.
MANY the songs of power the poet wrought
To shake the hearts of men. Yea, he had caught
The inarticulate and murmuring sound
That comes at midnight from the darkened ground
When the earth sleeps; for this he framed a word
Of human speech, and hearts were strangely stirred
That listened. And for him the evening dew
Fell with a sound of music, and the blue
Of the deep, starry sky he had the art
To put in language that did seem a part
Of the great scope and progeny of nature.
In woods, or waves, or winds, there was no creature Mysterious to him. He was too wise
Either to fear, or follow, or despise
Whom men call Science for he knew full well
All she had told, or still might live to tell,
Was known to him before her very birth;
Yea, that there was no secret of the earth,
Nor of the waters under, nor the skies,
That had been hidden from the poet's eyes;
By him there was no ocean unexplored,
Nor any savage coast that had not roared
Its music in his ears.
Not less he loved the ever-deepening brown
Of summer twilights on the enchanted hills;
And long would listen to the starts and thrills
Of birds that sang and rustled in the trees,
Or watch the footsteps of the wandering breeze
And the quick, wingèd shadows flashing by,
Or birds that slowly wheeled across the unclouded sky.
All these were written on the poet's soul;
But he knew, too, the utmost, distant goal
Of the human mind. His fiery thought did run
To Time's beginning, ere yon central sun
Had warmed to life the swarming broods of men.
In waking dreams, his many-visioned ken
Clutcht the large, final destiny of things.
He heard the starry music, and the wings
Of beings unfelt by others thrilled the air
About him. Yet the loud and angry blare
Of tempests found an echo in his verse,
And it was here that lovers did rehearse
The ditties they would sing when, not too soon,
Came the warm night; — shadows, and stars, and moon.
Who heard his songs were filled with noble rage, And wars took fire from his prophetic page
Most righteous wars, wherein, 'midst blood and tears,
The world rushed onward through a thousand years.
And still he made the gentle sounds of peace
Heroic; bade the nation's anger cease!
Bitter his songs of grief for those who fell
And for all this the people loved him well.
They loved him well and therefore, on a day, They said with one accord: "Behold how gray
Our poet's head hath grown! Ere 't is too late
Come, let us crown him in our Hall of State;
Ring loud the bells, give to the winds his praise,
And urge his fame to other lands and days!"
So was it done, and deep his joy therein.
But passing home at night, from out the din
Of the loud Hall, the poet, unaware,
Moved through a lonely and dim-lighted square-
There was the smell of lilacs in the air
And then the sudden singing of a bird,
Startled by his slow tread. What memory stirred
Within his brain he told not. Yet this night,-
Lone lingering when the eastern heavens were bright, -
He wove a song of such immortal art
That there lives not in all the world one heart-
One human heart unmoved by it. Long! long!
The laurel-crown has failed, but not that song
Born of the night and sorrow. Where he lies
At rest beneath the ever-shifting skies,
Age after age, from far-off lands they come,
With tears and flowers, to seek the poet's tomb.
O MAN with your rule and measure,
Your tests and analyses!
You may take your empty pleasure,
May kill the pine, if you please;
You may count the rings and the seasons,
May hold the sap to the sun,
You may guess at the ways and the reasons
Till your little day is done.
But for me the golden crest
That shakes in the wind and launches
Its spear toward the reddening West!
For me the bough and the breeze,
The sap unseen, and the glint
Of light on the dew-wet branches,
The hiding shadows, the hint
Of the soul of mysteries.
You may sound the sources of life,
And prate of its aim and scope;
You may search with your chilly knife
Through the broken heart of hope.
But for me the love-sweet breath,
And the warm, white bosom heaving,
And never a thought of death,
And only the bliss of living.
IN the morning of the skies
I heard a lark arise.
On the first day of the year
A wood-flower did appear.
Like a violet, like a lark,
Like the dawn that kills the dark,
Like a dewdrop, trembling, clinging,
Is the poet's first sweet singing.
"WHEN THE TRUE POET COMES"
"WHEN the true poet comes, how shall we know him?
By what clear token; manners, language, dress? Or will a voice from heaven speak and show himHim the swift healer of the earth's distress?
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