Myth and Romance: Being a Book of Verses. Cawein Madison Julius

      Like palpable music thou comest, like moonlight; and far,—

      Resonant bar upon bar,—

      The vibrating lyre

      Of the spirit responds with melodious fire,

      As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake,

      With flame and with flake,

      The chords of existence, the instrument star-sprung.

      Whose frame is of clay, so wonderfully molded from mire.

      Vested with vanquishment, come, O Desire, Desire!

      Breathe in this harp of my soul the audible angel of love!

      Make of my heart an Israfel burning above,

      A lute for the music of God, that lips, which are mortal, but stammer!

      Smite every rapturous wire

      With golden delirium, rebellion and silvery clamor,

      Crying—"Awake! awake!

      Too long hast thou slumbered! too far from the regions of glamour,

      With its mountains of magic, its fountains of Faëry, the spar-sprung,

      Hast thou wandered away, O Heart!

      Come, oh, come and partake

      Of necromance banquets of beauty; and slake

      Thy thirst in the waters of art,

      That are drawn from the streams

      Of love and of dreams.

      "Come, oh, come!

      No longer shall language be dumb!

      Thy vision shall grasp—

      As one doth the glittering hasp

      Of a dagger made splendid with gems and with gold—

      The wonder and richness of life, not anguish and hate of it merely.

      And out of the stark

      Eternity, awful and dark,

      Immensity silent and cold,—

      Universe-shaking as trumpets, or thunderous metals

      That cymbal; yet pensive and pearly

      And soft as the rosy unfolding of petals,

      Or crumbling aroma of blossoms that wither too early,—

      The majestic music of Death, where he plays

      On the organ of eons and days."

      Thou, oh, thou!

      Thou of the chorded shell and golden plectrum! thou

      Of the dark eyes and pale pacific brow!

      Music, who by the plangent waves,

      Or in the echoing night of labyrinthine caves,

      Or on God's mountains, lonely as the stars,

      Touchest reverberant bars

      Of immemorial sorrow and amaze;—

      Keeping regret and memory awake,

      And all the immortal ache

      Of love that leans upon the past's sweet days

      In retrospection!—now, oh, now,

      Interpreter and heart-physician, thou,

      Who gazest on the heaven and the hell

      Of life, and singest each as well,