The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder :: :: University of Virginia Library

MUSIC AND WORDS

I

This day I heard such music that I thought:
Hath human speech the power thus to be wrought,
Into such melody,—pure, sensuous sound,—
Into such mellow, murmuring mazes caught;
Can words (I said), when these keen tones are bound
(Silent, except in memory of this hour)—
Can human words alone usurp the power
Of trembling strings that thrill to the very soul,
And of this ecstasy bring back the whole?

II

Ah, no ('t was answered in my inmost heart),
Unto itself sufficient is each art,
And each doth utter what none other can—
Some hidden mood of the large soul of man.
Ah, think not thou with words well interweaved
To wake the tones wherein the viol grieved
With its most heavy burden; think not thou,
Adventurous, to push thy shallop's prow
Into that surge of well-remembered tones,
Striving to match each wandering wind that moans,
Each bell that tolls, and every bugle's blowing
With some most fitting word, some verse bestowing
A never-shifting form on that which past
Swift as a bird that glimmers down the blast.

III

So, still unworded, save in memory mute,
Rest thou sweet hour of viol and of lute;

129

Of thoughts that never, never can be spoken,
Too frail for the rough usage of men's words—
Thoughts that shall keep their silence all unbroken
Till music once more stirs them;—then like birds
That in the night-time slumber, they shall wake,
While all the leaves of all the forest shake.
O, hark! I hear it now, that tender strain
Fulfilled with all of sorrow save its pain.