"FOR THIS RELIEF—"
(Suggested by the poster commending a recent Revue as "the last word in syncopation.")
The days of our mourning are ended,
The lean years of famine are fled,
When, sick for a spoonful of aught that was tuneful,
We've sorrowed as over the dead
For Music, forlorn and unfriended,
Gone down into glimmerless gloom,
While rude "rag-time" revels were dancing a devils'
Tattoo on her tomb.
A new dawn of promise doth redden
The rim of our Stygian night;
Our bondage is breaking—O blessed awaking
To melody merry and bright!
My heart, long o'erloaded and leaden,
Now bounds to the blue like a bird;
The shadow has shifted; with paean uplifted
I hail that "last word"!