Whirl of pretense, of gilding, of tinsel, of glitter;
Strange that its patter and laughter can keep up so long;
Echo on echo of mocking and cat-call and twitter,
Outside the City of Song.
Long is the road, that they travel and know not the turning;
Black is the pit at the end, and the fear and the wrong;
But bitterest, blackest, their last inescapable yearning
For the lost City of Song.
While in its courts, where the fountains leap up to the zenith,
Dreamers and poets and lovers go all the day long,
Dazzled, and raptured with pondering all that it meaneth,
To dwell in the City of Song.
ON LILY STREET, NANTUCKET
ON Lily Street, where drowsy crickets hum,
And two and two the summer lovers come,
Straying so happily their island paths,
Where the white candle flickers at a low-hung door,
I see soft hooded figures cross a bit of moor—
Hurrying, eager, they—
To hear you play.
Now as the moonlight slants on whitened roof,
And old New England still gives austere proof
Of bygone things in narrowed window glass,
The guests sit quiet in the panelled rooms
Content with half lights and half tinted glooms,
Because they know that they—
Shall hear you play.
And I who lean upon the leafy sill
Feel moonlight dreaming change to vagrom thrill,
And looking forth as on some lantern screen,
See, flitting o’er the stark old house-wall nigh.
Soft shadows of your vivid melody.
So—in an eerie way
I hear you play.
Till, on the house wall opposite my place
I see wild Carmen’s bright poinsettia face;
I see Grieg’s “Day break,” streaming up the sky.
Upon the old Nantucket houses blank
I watch Tannhouser’s Pilgrims climb in solemn rank,
—Past windows grey—the while you play.
Long on the bare screen grieves the “Butterfly.”
Then, as her Oriental sorrows die,
Forth doth the “Earl King” ride;
The Schumann “Warum” drops its pensive leaves,
Macdowell’s “Sea” its toppling billow heaves,
Chaminades, “Dancing Fay”
Trips, as you play.
But ere your noble hands have given their gift
Down on the town, the bells of Curfew drift,
The candle gutters at the low-hung door.
Yet, see; from this low window where I muse,
All Lily Street doth spectrally suffuse,
Glimmers each tiny pane.
You call it “moonlight,” but I think that they
The old Nantucketers, long passed away
Peer forth to hear you play!