Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”
HAUNTING FINGERS
A PHANTASY IN A MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
“Are you awake,
Comrades, this silent night?
Well ’twere if all of our glossy gluey make
Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!”
“O viol, my friend,
I watch, though Phosphor nears,
And I fain would drowse away to its utter end
This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!”
And they felt past handlers clutch them,
Though none was in the room,
Old players’ dead fingers touch them,
Shrunk in the tomb.
“’Cello, good mate,
You speak my mind as yours:
Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state,
Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?”
“Once I could thrill
The populace through and through,
Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.” . . .
(A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.)
And they felt old muscles travel
Over their tense contours,
And with long skill unravel
Cunningest scores.
“The tender pat
Of her aery finger-tips
Upon me daily—I rejoiced thereat!”
(Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)
“My keys’ white shine,
Now sallow, met a hand
Even whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth with mine
In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!”