free-verse131 lines

To the Spirit of Music

by Henry Kendall

The cool grass blowing in a breeze

Of April valleys sooms and sways;

On slopes that dip to quiet seas

Through far, faint drifts of yellowing haze.

I lie like one who, in a dream

Of sounds and splendid coloured things,

Seems lifted into life supreme

And has a sense of waxing wings.

For through a great arch-light which floods

And breaks and spreads and swims along

High royal-robed autumnal woods,

I hear a glorious sunset song.

But, ah, Euterpe! I that pause

And listen to the strain divine

Can never learn its words, because

I am no son of thine.

How sweet is wandering where the west

Is full of thee, what time the morn

Looks from his halls of rosy rest

Across green miles of gleaming corn!

How sweet are dreams in shady nooks,

When bees are out, and day is mute,

While down the dell there floats the brook's

Fine echo of thy marvellous lute!

And oh, how sweet is that sad tune

Of thine, within the evening breeze,

Which roams beneath the mirrored moon

On silver-sleeping summer seas!

How blest are they whom thou hast crowned,

Thy priests the lords who understand

The deep divinity of sound,

And live their lives in Wonderland!

These stand within thy courts and see

The light exceeding round thy throne,

But I an alien unto thee

I faint afar off, and alone.

In hills where the keen Thessalonian

Made clamour with horse and with horn,

In oracular woods the Dodonian

The mystical maiden was born.

And the high, the Olympian seven,

Ringed round with ineffable flame,

Baptized her in halos of heaven,

And gave her her beautiful name.

And Delphicus, loving her, brought her

Immutable dower of dreams,

And clothed her with glory, and taught her

The words of the winds and the streams.

She dwelt with the echoes that dwell

In far immemorial hills;

She wove of their speeches a spell

She borrowed the songs of the rills;

And anthems of forest and fire,

And passionate psalms of the rain

Had life in the life of the lyre,

And breath in its infinite strain.

In a fair, in a floral abode,

Of purple and yellow and red,

The voice of her floated and flowed,

The light of her lingered and spread,

And ever there slipt through the bars

Of the leaves of her luminous bowers,

Syllables splendid as stars,

And faultless as moon-litten flowers.

III

Lady of a land of wonder,

Daughter of the hill supernal,

Far from frost and far from thunder

Under sons and moons eternal!

Long ago the strong Immortals

Took her hence on wheels of fire,

Caught her up and shut their portals

Floral maid with fervent lyre.

But stray fallen notes of brightness

Yet within our world are ringing,

Floating on the winds of lightness

Glorious fragments of her singing.

Bud of light, she shines above us;

But a few of starry pinions

Passioned souls who are her lovers

Dwell in her divine dominions.

Few they are, but in the centric

Fanes of Beauty hold their station;

Kings of music, lords authentic,

Of the worlds of Inspiration.

These are they to whom are given

Eyes to see the singing stream-land,

Far from earth and near to heaven,

Known to gods and men as Dreamland.

Mournful humanity, stricken and worn,

Toiling for peace in undignified days,

Set in a sphere with the shadows forlorn,

Seeing sublimity dimmed by a haze

Mournful humanity wearing the sign

Of trouble with time and unequable things,

Long alienated from spaces divine,

Sometimes remembers that once it had wings.

Chiefly it is when the song and the light

Sweeten the heart of the summering west,

Music and glory that lend to the night

Glimpses of marvellous havens of rest.

Chiefly it is when the beautiful day

Dies with a sound on its lips like a psalm

Anthem of loveliness drifting away

Over a sea of unspeakable calm.

Then Euterpe's harmonies

In the ballad rich and rare,

Freighted with old memories,

Float upon the evening air

Float, like shine in films of rain,

Full of past pathetic themes,

Tales of perished joy and pain,

Frail and faint as dreams in dreams.

Then to far-off homes we rove,

Homes of youth and hope and faith,

Beautiful with lights of love

Sanctified by shrines of death.

Ah! and in that quiet hour

Soul by soul is borne away

Over tracts of leaf and flower,

Lit with a supernal day;

Over Music-world serene,

Spheres unknown to woes and wars,

Homes of wildernesses green,

Silver seas and golden shores;

Then, like spirits glorified,

Sweet to hear and bright to see,

Lords in Eden they abide

Robed with strange new majesty.