The Triumph of Music, and Other Lyrics

I There lay in a vale 'twixt lone mountains A garden entangled with flowers, Where the whisper of echoing fountains Stirred softly the musk-breathing bowers. Where torrents cast down from rock-masses, From caverns of red-granite steeps, With thunders sonorous clove passes And maddened dark gulfs with rash leaps, With the dolorous foam of their leaps.
And, oh, when the sunrays came heaping The foam of those musical chasms, With a scintillant dust as of diamonds, It seemed that white spirits were sweeping Down, down thro' those voluble chasms, Wild weeping in resonant spasms. And the wave from the red-hearted granite In veins rolled tumbling around; Meandered thro' shade-haunted forests Where many rock barriers did span it To dash it in froth and in sound: Where the nights with their great moons could wan it, Or star its dusk stillness profound.
III
And here in the night would I wander On woodways where fragrances kissed, By shadows where murmurings kissed; And here would I tarry to ponder When the moon in blue vales made a mist; Dim in forests of rank, rocking cedars, Whose wildness made glad with their scent, Whose boughs in the tempests were bent Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders, In the battle all ragged and rent.
And so when the moonshine was floating Far up on the mountain's bleak head, On the uttermost foam of the torrent, Would I string a wild harp while was gloating The moon on my blossomy bed. Or I lay where a fountain of blossoms Rained rustling from arches aloft, From the thick-scented arbors aloft, And I sang as the blossoms' white bosoms Pressed silk-smooth to mine and lay soft: I sang as their redolence stung me, And laughed on my blossomy couch, Till the fragrance and music had flung me Into shadows of sleep with their touch, The magic of exquisite touch....
One night as I wondered and wandered In this my rare Aidenn of flowers, I saw where I lingered and pondered A youth cast asleep mid the bowers: A youth on a mantle of satin, A poppy-red robe in the flowers.