A LONELY FLUTE
PROEM
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.
LAUS MARIÆ
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.