TO A PASSEPIED BY SCARLATTI

Strange little tune so thin and rare

Like scents of roses of long ago,

Quavering lightly upon the strings

Of a violin, and dying there

With a dancing flutter of delicate wings;

Thy courtly joy and thy gentle woe,

Thy gracious gladness and plaintive fears

Are lost in the clamorous age we know,

And pale like a moon in the lurid day;

A phantom of music, strangely fled

From the princely halls of the quiet dead,

Down the long lanes of the vanished years

Echoing frailly and far away.