Edward MacDowell | Page 9

cook is an African, yours is Chinese and perhaps your housemaid is
Scandinavian, your chauffeur Irish, and so on. Music, to be effective in
such a patchwork civilization as this, would have to be _simply
music_--universal, composite, international.
MacDowell has created a typical music, typical of himself, not of any
locality, and he wished it to be judged as music, not as American music,
and the justice of his desire cannot be gainsaid. Recalling all of the
influences of inherited and natural temperament, education, foreign
environment and American experience, jealous as we are of his genius,
we must admit that he caught in his productions the complexity of his
time. His music is universal and reflects the genius of his
contemporaries, as well as that of the older masters, impregnated with
his individual creativeness. He had seeing eyes and hearing ears, and
realizing the eternal principle of rhythm and the universality of tone, he
caught the keynote of everything related to him in the outer world, with
its corresponding relation in the inner or unseen realms, producing
compositions that are complete in form, accurate in intellectual grasp
and spiritually prophetic.
He fashioned his own wreath of immortelles,
With matchless skill.

Tones lent themselves with subtle eagerness
To do his will.
Repeat
them as his genius did design,
His pow'r devise;
No higher tribute
to his name and fame
From us could rise.
POETICAL INTERPRETATIONS
By ELIZABETH FRY PAGE
TO MACDOWELL
Now, in the darkness, mute, from hour to hour,
Sits one who lov'd all
life, and from the strings
Of well-tuned harp brought sounds of

common things,
And sang of sea and wood and tree and flow'r.
His
task all done, fled usefulness and pow'r,
Through the deep shade his
uncurbed fancy wings,
While with his fame his proud land loudly
rings,
And praise falls on his work in lavish show'r.
The rosemary we bring, and no rude hand
The laurel would withhold,
the plaudits stay.
For him is seen the magic circled wand
That to
creative genius points the way.
His music's bold, true note Time's test
will stand.
His age in art begins with cloudless day.
A.D. 1620
Exiled from home, for sake of faith held dear,
To distant shores the
Pilgrim Fathers turned.
Their grief-stung hearts for Freedom's
blessing yearned,
Where persecution's lash they need not fear.
In
stately ships they sailed the ocean drear,
And more of trial and of
hardship learned;
But in their loyal bosoms still there burned

Religious zeal that lent heroic cheer.
One hundred souls from Mother England came,
And many days fared
on a storm-tossed sea,
Men, women, children, to be known to Fame

For braving death for sacred Liberty.
To our bleak, shelt'ring port
they gave a name,
And marked an epoch in our history.
SONG
A merry song the pilgrim sang
To check the sigh of pain,
At
thought of leaving his dear home
He ne'er might see again.
'Twas
o-ho-ho and ah-ha-ha,
He laughed and sang alway;
When comrades'
eyes were filled with tears,
Or sad heads turned away.
A cheery song, a merry song,
As o'er Life's sea we sail,
Will send a
thrill of courage new
To hearts about to fail.
So sound a note, oh
singer brave,
Whate'er your own soul's pain;
When time repeats its
echo sweet,
'Twill bless your life again.

IN DEEP WOODS
A solitary soul, I walk at eve
Without the village walls, and in the
deep
And sacred hush of woods, where fairies sleep,
Calm Nature
soothes my senses, and I live
In realms that only creatures can
conceive,
Who with their holy guardian spirits keep
Firm faith, and
into loving arms I creep,
And mundane cares no more my spirit
grieve.
Cool breezes blow about me, and I hear
The mellow bells of distant
churches chime.
I wander on, with never thought of fear,
Secure as
in some peaceful heav'nly clime.
Majestic, mystic things seem close
and clear,
And all my soul is wrapt in thoughts sublime.
SHADOW DANCE
We two sat watching the shadows dance,
(Long years had passed
since we were young),
And o'er the days that had fled there hung
A
mist of sorrow and sad romance.
From out the gloom of an old stone wall,
The moon drew creatures of
wondrous shape,
And none of our lost dreams could escape,
A cruel
magic revealed them all.
They bowed and swayed with a mocking grace,
And held our gaze as
they flitted by;
Our deep-drawn breaths were our sole reply,
As one
by one we beheld each face.
A dream of Wealth and a dream of Fame,
And Love's dream, these
were the foremost three,
Each with its shadowy train, till we
Could
greet the phantoms of youth by name.
Our faces paled and we trembled there,
Watching the shadows dance
on the wall;
Wealth, Fame and Love--we had missed them all,
And
Sorrow's chalice had been our share.

But there was hope and we still had life,
And hearts are brave that the
years have tried;
We looked in each other's eyes and sighed,
Sad,
pain-filled eyes, but free of strife.
Dance on, gaunt shadows, beside the wall,
We shrink from you in
your cruel mirth;
But what are you and the dreams of Earth?
Our