BEETHOVEN
HE wandered down, an Orpheus wilder-souled,
From some melodious world of love and song,
And through our earthly vales strange music rolled.
Who heard that alien note could only long,
As pale Eurydice once longed, to know again
The happier ways, the more harmonious air,
Where once they heard that half-remembered strain,—
Where once their exiled feet were wont to fare.
A gleam of some strange golden life now gone,
A sad remembrance of celestial things,
Some old-time glory, like the gods', outshone
From men's rapt souls, wherein a memory clings
Of that diviner day, from them withdrawn.
For all the dreams that smouldered in man's breast,
And all the clearer ways he yearned to reach,—
The fugitive ideal, the old unrest,—
Found utterance in song, that slept in speech.
And like a minstrel in an alien land,
Who sings his native strains while men crowd round
And hearken long, but cannot understand,
He sang to us, and through the unknown sound
We caught a passing glimmer of the soul
Those foreign runes concealed, and strove to glean
From out the uninterpretable whole
Some earthlier harmony.
It must have been
He heard far-off that low uranian strain
That only maddens him who vainly hears;
For they, the gods, soon saw the god-like pain
That mocked a man, and closed his listening ears.