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SCHUBERT.
Symphony in C major.
1. ANDANTE—ALLEGRO.
WHENCE come these golden horn-notes, waning, swelling,The soul with memories of the Past that stir?
From India's hills and Scythia's deserts drear
Afar they come, of ancient peoples telling,
Beyond the Oxus and the Indus dwelling,
And of the Wander-Lust, from year to year
In them that waxed, until it grew a spur,
Their feet into the wander-ways compelling.
Of impulse old they tell and ancient longing,
Unknowing that whereafter it did yearn,
Of vague strange fancies on the spirit thronging,
Of wishes wild that in the breast did burn,
Till all the thought became a wandering fire,
That needs must up and after its desire.
2. ANDANTE CON MOTO.
THE hautboys of the stir of preparationTell, of the gathering of the caravan,
Of the departure, man ensuing man,
Horde after horde and nation after nation,
Till all the deserts, station unto station,
With tribe on tribe are filled and clan on clan,
The rear belike a year behind the van,
All pouring Europe-ward without cessation.
Onward they press, of obstacles uncounting,
Hills over-climbing, crossing stream and sea,
Armies out-warring, battlements affronting,
Restless, resistless as fatality,
Till, with a final flux, the Alps surmounting,
They overflood the plains of Italy.
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3. ALLEGRO VIVACE.
DOWN-LAPSING from the hills, a human ocean,With shining arms and standards topped for foam,
To the sheer heart the torrent surges home
Of the old world: nor courage nor devotion
Nor wit can stay its Fate-foreordered motion.
No hope for her beneath the blue sky-dome,
At the barbarians' hands Imperial Rome,
Like Hannibal, must drink the deathly potion.
To their sphinx Asia used, where nothing alters,
Drunk with the wine of change they are: behold,
How of queens' necklets they their horses' halters
Make and kings' crowns cast in the pot for gold,
Their weapon-dance about the ruined altars
Of either faith wild urging, new and old.
4. ALLEGRO FINALE.
THE stress is over, done the work of rendingPresent from Past and soul from body free;
Accomplished is the appointed surgery,
That must avail the rotten Past for ending.
Now, with its healing salves, intent on mending
Life's bleeding wounds, from War's subsiding sea
Peace lifts its head and to the fair To-be
All things which live and are again are tending.
The world-leach Time, the Assainer and Forgiver,
War's breaches heals in town and plain and mart;
From every quarter flow Life's streams—as dart
On dart poured out they were from Natures quiver,
—Together, as a mighty, placid river,
Tow'rd the rebirth of the old world in Art.
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