A Lonely Flute

And now 't was like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song That makes the Heavens be mute. COLERIDGE.

Beyond the pearly portal, Beyond the last dim star, Pale, perfect, and immortal, The eternal visions are, That never any rapture Of sorrow or of mirth Of any song shall capture To dwell with men on earth.
Many a strange and tragic Old sorrow still is mute And melodies of magic Still slumber in the flute, Many a mighty vision Has caught my yearning eye And swept with calm derision In robes of splendor by.
The rushing susurration Of some eternal wing Beats mighty variation Through all the song I sing; The vague, deep-mouthed commotion From its ancestral home Booms like the shout of ocean Across the crumbling foam; And these low lyric whispers Make answer wistfully As sea-shells ... dreaming lispers Beside the eternal sea.

There is a name like some deep melody Hallowed by sundown, delicate as the plash Of lonely waves on solitary lakes And rounded as the sudden-bursting bloom Of bold, deep-throated notes in a midnight cloud When shadowy belfries far away roll out Across the dark their avalanche of sound.
It is a wild voice lost in the wail of the wind; The silvery-twinkling plectrum of the rain Plays in the poplar tree no other tune And pines intone it softly as a prayer In leafy litanies. The name is raised Even to God's ear from ancient arches dim With caverned twilight and dull altar smoke Where tapers weave athwart the azure haze Innumerable pageantries of dusk.
Low-voiced and soft-eyed women must they live Who bear that holy name. And now for one Time has no other honor than to be The meaning of an unremembered rhyme, The breath of a forgotten singer's song.
( October , 1903)

I must forget awhile the mellow flutes And all the lyric wizardry of strings; The fragile clarinet, Tremulous over meadows rich with dawn, Must knock against my vagrant heart And throb and cry no more.