May-Day | Page 4

shouting boys that chase their ball,
Pass the
height of minstrel skill,
But the ploughman's thoughtless cry,
Lowing oxen, sheep that
bleat,
And the joiner's hammer-beat,
Softened are above their will.
All grating
discords melt,
No dissonant note is dealt,
And though thy voice be shrill
Like
rasping file on steel,
Such is the temper of the air,
Echo waits with art and care,
And
will the faults of song repair.
So by remote Superior Lake,
And by resounding Mackinac,
When northern storms
and forests shake,
And billows on the long beach break,
The artful Air doth separate

Note by note all sounds that grate,
Smothering in her ample breast
All but godlike
words,
Reporting to the happy ear
Only purified accords.
Strangely wrought from
barking waves,
Soft music daunts the Indian braves,--
Convent-chanting which the
child
Hears pealing from the panther's cave
And the impenetrable wild.

One musician is sure,
His wisdom will not fail,
He has not tasted wine impure,
Nor
bent to passion frail.
Age cannot cloud his memory,
Nor grief untune his voice,

Ranging down the ruled scale
From tone of joy to inward wail,
Tempering the pitch
of all
In his windy cave.
He all the fables knows,
And in their causes tells,--

Knows Nature's rarest moods,
Ever on her secret broods.
The Muse of men is coy,

Oft courted will not come;
In palaces and market squares
Entreated, she is dumb;

But my minstrel knows and tells
The counsel of the gods,
Knows of Holy Book the
spells,
Knows the law of Night and Day,
And the heart of girl and boy,
The tragic
and the gay,
And what is writ on Table Round
Of Arthur and his peers,
What sea
and land discoursing say
In sidereal years.
He renders all his lore
In numbers wild
as dreams,
Modulating all extremes,--
What the spangled meadow saith
To the
children who have faith;
Only to children children sing,
Only to youth will spring be
spring.
Who is the Bard thus magnified?
When did he sing, and where abide?
Chief of song where poets feast
Is the wind-harp which thou seest
In the casement at
my side.
AEolian harp,
How strangely wise thy strain!
Gay for youth, gay for youth,
(Sweet
is art, but sweeter truth,)
In the hall at summer eve
Fate and Beauty skilled to weave.

From the eager opening strings

Rung loud and bold the song.
Who but loved the
wind-harp's note?
How should not the poet doat
On its mystic tongue,
With its
primeval memory,
Reporting what old minstrels said
Of Merlin locked the harp
within,--
Merlin paying the pain of sin,
Pent in a dungeon made of air,--
And some
attain his voice to hear,
Words of pain and cries of fear,
But pillowed all on melody,

As fits the griefs of bards to be.
And what if that all-echoing shell,
Which thus the
buried Past can tell,
Should rive the Future, and reveal
What his dread folds would
fain conceal?
It shares the secret of the earth,
And of the kinds that owe her birth.

Speaks not of self that mystic tone,
But of the Overgods alone:
It trembles to the
cosmic breath,--
As it heareth, so it saith;
Obeying meek the primal Cause,
It is the
tongue of mundane laws:
And this, at least, I dare affirm,
Since genius too has bound
and term,
There is no bard in all the choir,
Not Homer's self, the poet sire,
Wise
Milton's odes of pensive pleasure,
Or Shakspeare, whom no mind can measure,
Nor
Collins' verse of tender pain,
Nor Byron's clarion of disdain,
Scott, the delight of
generous boys,
Or Wordsworth, Pan's recording voice,--
Not one of all can put in
verse,
Or to this presence could rehearse,
The sights and voices ravishing
The boy
knew on the hills in Spring,
When pacing through the oaks he heard
Sharp queries of
the sentry-bird,
The heavy grouse's sudden whirr,
The rattle of the kingfisher;

Saw
bonfires of the harlot flies
In the lowland, when day dies;
Or marked, benighted and
forlorn,
The first far signal-fire of morn.
These syllables that Nature spoke,
And the
thoughts that in him woke,
Can adequately utter none
Save to his ear the wind-harp

lone.
And best can teach its Delphian chord
How Nature to the soul is moored,
If
once again that silent string,
As erst it wont, would thrill and ring.
Not long ago, at eventide,
It seemed, so listening, at my side
A window rose, and, to
say sooth,
I looked forth on the fields of youth:
I saw fair boys bestriding steeds,
I
knew their forms in fancy weeds,
Long, long concealed by sundering fates,
Mates of
my youth,--yet not my mates,
Stronger and bolder far than I,
With grace, with genius,
well attired,
And then as now from far admired,
Followed with love
They knew not
of,
With passion cold and shy.
O joy, for what recoveries rare!
Renewed, I breathe
Elysian air,
See youth's glad mates in earliest bloom,--
Break not my dream, obtrusive
tomb!
Or teach thou, Spring! the grand recoil
Of life resurgent from the soil

Wherein was dropped the mortal spoil.
Soft on the south-wind sleeps the haze!
So on thy broad mystic van
Lie the
opal-coloured days,
And waft the miracle to man.
Soothsayer of the eldest gods,

Repairer of what harms betide,
Revealer of the inmost powers
Prometheus proffered,
Jove denied;
Disclosing treasures more than true,
Or in what far to-morrow due;

Speaking by the tongues of flowers,
By the ten-tongued laurel speaking,
Singing by
the oriole songs,
Heart of bird the man's heart seeking;
Whispering hints of treasure
hid
Under Morn's unlifted lid,
Islands looming just beyond
The dim horizon's
utmost bound;--
Who can, like thee, our rags