And ever gently touch the violin,
Until an impulse grows of a sudden, like wind
On the brow of the earth,
And the voice of your violin shows its wide-swung girth
With a crash of the strings and a medley of rage and mirth;
And my rested senses spring
Like juice from a broken rind,
And the joys that your melodies bring
I know worth a life-time to win,
As you waken to love and this hour your violin!
GERTRUDE.
[In Memory: 1877.]
What shall I say, my friend, my own heart healing,
When for my love you cannot answer me?
This earth would quake, alas! might I but see
You smile, death's rigorous law repealing!
Pale lips, your mystery so well concealing,
May not the eloquent, varied minstrelsy
Of my inspired ardor potent be
To touch your chords to music's uttered feeling?
Friend, here you cherished flowers: send me now
One ghostly bloom to prove that you are blessed.
No? If denial such as brands my brow
Be in your heavenly regions, too, confessed,
Oh may it prove the truth that your still eyes
Foresee the end of all futurities!
UNITY IN SPACE.
Take me away into a storm of snow
So white and soft, I feel no deathly chill,
But listen to the murmuring overflow
Of clouds that fall in many a frosty rill!
Take me away into the sunset's glow,
That holds a summer in a glorious bloom;
Or take me to the shadowed woods that grow
On the sky's mountains, in the evening gloom!
Give me an entrance to the limpid lake
When moonbeams shine across its purity!
A life there is, within the life we take
So commonly, for which 't were well to die.
THE SHELL AND THE WORLD.
The world was like a shell to me,—
Its voice with distant song was low;
But now its mysteries I know:
I hear the turmoil of the sea.
The whirling, soft, and tender sound
That meant I knew not what of lore,—
I dream its mystery now no more:
Its reckless meaning I have found.