The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley in ten volumes |
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ON READING DR. HENRY VAN DYKE'S VOLUME OF POEMS—MUSIC |
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 | The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley |  |
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ON READING DR. HENRY VAN DYKE'S VOLUME OF POEMS—MUSIC
Music!—Yea, and the airs you play—Out of the faintest Far-Away
And the sweetest, too; and the dearest Here,
With its quavering voice but its bravest cheer—
The prayer that aches to be all expressed—
The kiss of love at its tenderest:
Music—music, with glad heart-throbs
Within it; and music with tears and sobs
Shaking it, as the startled soul
Is shaken at shriek of the fife and roll
Of the drums;—then as suddenly lulled again
With the whisper and lisp of the summer rain:
Mist of melodies fragrance-fine—
The bird-song flicked from the eglantine
With the dews when the springing bramble throws
A rarer drench on its ripest rose,
And the wingèd song soars up and sinks
To the dove's dim coo by the river-brinks
Where the ripple's voice still laughs along
Its glittering path of light and song.
Music, O Poet, and all your own
By right of capture and that alone,—
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Born of the earth and the air and the sea,
And over and under it, and all through,
We catch the chime of The Anthem, too.
| The Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley | |