Music and Other Poems | Page 3

an enchanted boat
Upon the downward-gliding stream,

Toward the allegro's wide, bright sea
Of dancing, glittering, blending
tone,
Where every instrument is sounding free,
And harps like
wedding-chimes are rung, and trumpets blown
Around the barque of love
That sweeps, with smiling skies above,

A royal galley, many-oared,
Into the happy harbour of the perfect
chord.
IX
IRIS
Light to the eye and Music to the ear,--
These are the builders of the
bridge that springs
>From earths's dim shore of half-remembered
things
To reach the spirit's home, the heavenly sphere
Where
nothing silent is and nothing dark.
So when I see the rainbow's arc
Spanning the showery sky, far-off I
hear
Music, and every colour sings:
And while the symphony builds up its
round
Full sweep of architectural harmony
Above the tide of Time,
far, far away I see
A bow of colour in the bow of sound.

Red as the dawn the trumpet rings,
Imperial purple from the
trombone flows,
The mellow horn melts into evening rose.
Blue as the sky, the choir of strings
Darkens in double-bass to ocean's
hue,
Rises in violins to noon-tide's blue,
With threads of quivering
light shot through and through.
Green as the mantle that the summer flings
Around the world, the
pastoral reeds in time
Embroider melodies of May and June.
Yellow as gold,
Yea, thrice-refined gold,
And purer than the treasures of the mine,
Floods of the human voice
divine
Along the arch in choral song are rolled.
So bends the bow complete:
And radiant rapture flows
Across the bridge, so full, so strong, so sweet,
That the uplifted spirit
hardly knows
Whether the Music-Light that glows
Within the arch
of tones and colours seven
Is sunset-peace of earth, or sunrise-joy of
Heaven.
X
SEA AND SHORE
Music, I yield to thee;
As swimmer to the sea
I give my Spirit to the
flood of song:
Bear me upon thy breast
In rapture and at rest,
Bathe me in pure
delight and make me strong;
From strife and struggle bring release,
And draw the waves of passion
into tides of peace.
Remember'd songs, most dear,
In living songs I hear,
While
blending voices gently swing and sway

In melodies of love,
Whose mighty currents move,
With singing
near and singing far away;
Sweet in the glow of morning light,
And sweeter still across the starlit
gulf of night.
Music, in thee we float,
And lose the lonely note
Of self in thy
celestial-ordered strain,
Until at last we find
The life to love resigned
In harmony of joy
restored again;
And songs that cheered our mortal days
Break on the coast of light in
endless hymns of praise.
December, 1901 - May, 1903.
PEACE
I
IN EXCELSIS
Two dwellings, Peace, are thine.
One is the mountain-height,
Uplifted in the loneliness of light

Beyond the realm of shadows,--fine,
And far, and clear,--where
advent of the night
Means only glorious nearness of the stars,
And
dawn, unhindered, breaks above the bars
That long the lower world in
twilight keep.
Thou sleepest not, and hast no need of sleep,
For all
thy cares and fears have dropped away;
The night's fatigue, the
fever-fret of day,
Are far below thee; and earth's weary wars,
In
vain expense of passion, pass
Before thy sight like visions in a glass,

Or like the wrinkles of the storm that creep
Across the sea and
leave no trace
Of trouble on that immemorial face,--
So brief appear
the conflicts, and so slight
The wounds men give, the things for

which they fight.
Here hangs a fortress on the distant steep,--
A lichen clinging to the
rock:
There sails a fleet upon the deep,--
A wandering flock
Of snow-winged gulls: and yonder, in the plain,

A marble palace shines,--a grain
Of mica glittering in the rain.

Beneath thy feet the clouds are rolled
By voiceless winds: and far
between
The rolling clouds new shores and peaks are seen,
In
shimmering robes of green and gold,
And faint aerial hue
That silent fades into the silent blue.
Thou, from thy mountain-hold,
All day, in tranquil wisdom, looking
down
On distant scenes of human toil and strife,
All night, with
eyes aware of loftier life,
Uplooking to the sky, where stars are sown,

Dost watch the everlasting fields grow white
Unto the harvest of
the sons of light,
And welcome to thy dwelling-place sublime
The
few strong souls that dare to climb
The slippery crags and find thee
on the height.
II
DE PROFUNDIS
But in the depth thou hast another home,
For hearts less daring, or more frail.
Thou dwellest also in the
shadowy vale;
And pilgrim-souls that roam
With weary feet o'er hill and dale,

Bearing the burden and the heat
Of toilful days,
Turn from the dusty ways
To find thee in thy green
and still retreat.

Here is no vision wide outspread
Before the lonely and exalted seat

Of all-embracing knowledge. Here, instead,
A little garden, and a
sheltered