LITMIR.BIZ

         Know you the low pervading breeze

                     That softly sings

         In the trembling leaves of twilight trees,

      As if the wind were dreaming on its wings?

         And have you marked their still degrees

         Of ebbing melody, like the strings

      Of a silver harp swept by a spirit’s hand

            In some strange glimmering land,

                     ’Mid gushing springs,

                     And glistenings

      Of waters and of planets, wild and grand!

         And have you marked in that still time

         The chariots of those shining cars

         Brighten upon the hushing dark,

                     And bent to hark

      That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime,

         Pause in the dilating lustre

                     Of the spheral cluster;

         Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep

      As dreams of heaven to souls that sleep!

         And felt, despite earth’s jarring wars,

                     When day is done

                     And dead the sun,

         Still a voice divine can sing,

         Still is there sympathy can bring

                     A whisper from the stars!

      Ah, with this sentience quickly will you know

      How like a tree I tremble to the tones

                     Of your sweet voice!

                     How keenly I rejoice

         When in me with sweet motions slow

      The spiritual music ebbs and moans—

      Lives in the lustre of those heavenly eyes,

      Dies in the light of its own paradise,—

      Dies, and relives eternal from its death,

      Immortal melodies in each deep breath;

      Sweeps thro’ my being, bearing up to thee

      Myself, the weight of its eternity;

      Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire,

      It marries music with the human lyre,

      Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.

      Where faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless,

         Where passion is silent and hearts never crave;

      Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream,

         In patience and peace thou art gone—to thy grave!

      Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning,

         Dead tho’ a thousand hands stretch’d out to save.

      Thou cam’st to us sighing, and singing and dying,

         How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert?

      Placidly fading, and sinking and shading

         At last to that shadow, the latest desert;

      Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining.

         Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!

      The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens,

         The world and its voices, the sea and the sky,

      The bloom of creation, the tie of relation,

         All—all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye;

      The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten,

         Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.

      The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless;

         And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth;

      No last loving token of wedded love broken,

         No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth;

      Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower,

         Fall’n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.

         Take thy lute and sing

      By the ruined castle walls,

      Where the torrent-foam falls,

      And long weeds wave:

         Take thy lute and sing,

      O’er the grey ancestral grave!

         Daughter of a King,

            Tune thy string.

         Sing of happy hours,

      In the roar of rushing time;

      Till all the echoes chime

      To the days gone by;

         Sing of passing hours

      To the ever-present sky;—

         Weep—and let the showers

            Wake thy flowers.

         Sing of glories gone:—

      No more the blazoned fold

      From the banner is unrolled;

      The

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