TO A MUSICIAN
Musician, with the bent and brooding face,
White brow and thunderous eyes: you are not playing
Merely the music that dead hand did trace.
Musician, with the lifted resolute face,
And scornful smile about your closed mouth straying,
And hand that moves with swift or fluttering grace,
It is not that man's music you are playing.
The grave and merry tunes he made you are playing,
Each march and dirge and dance he made endures,
But changed and mastered, and these things you're saying,
These joys and sorrows are not his but yours.
You take those notes of his: you seize and fling
His music as a dancer flings her veil,
Toss it and twist it, mould it, make it sing,
Whisper, shout savagely, lament and wail,
Rush like a hurricane, pause and faint and fail:
And as I watch, my body and soul are bound
Helpless, immovable, in thongs of sound.
Lonely and strange musician, standing there,
Your bent ear listening to your own soul speaking,
I hear vibrating on the smitten air
The crying of your suffering and your seeking.
Agonised! raptured! frustrate! you are haunted,
Pursued, beset, beleaguered, filled, possessed
By all you are, all things you have lost and wanted,
Things clear, too clear, things only to be guessed.
I do not know what earlier scenes you knew,
What sweet reproachful memories you hold
Of broken dreams you had before you grew
So conscious and so lonely and so old.
I do not know what women's words have taught
Your heart, and only dimly know by name,
The many wandering cities where you have sought
Splendour, and found the hollowness of fame,