 | The music-lesson of Confucius, And Other Poems |  |
142
LOST DREAMS.
VOICES, voices ever round me crying!
Voices in the midnight in the storm!
Voices deep in slumber softly sighing!
Memories which long ago lost form!
Memories which once too lightly faded
Out of life, and now with endless pain
In such tone and colour darkly shaded,
Strive in agony to live again.
Voices in the midnight in the storm!
Voices deep in slumber softly sighing!
Memories which long ago lost form!
Memories which once too lightly faded
Out of life, and now with endless pain
In such tone and colour darkly shaded,
Strive in agony to live again.
Golden images of early morning!
When I stood in youth beside a sea
Fringed with palaces, why did no warning
Ring from ivory windows unto me?
Voices! had ye then but softly spoken—
‘Print these pictures ever on thy soul!’
Ye would not be wailing now and broken,
Agonized with tasks beyond control.
When I stood in youth beside a sea
Fringed with palaces, why did no warning
Ring from ivory windows unto me?
Voices! had ye then but softly spoken—
‘Print these pictures ever on thy soul!’
Ye would not be wailing now and broken,
Agonized with tasks beyond control.
By the sea and in the silent valleys,
On the lakes where morning mists arise,
Or in gardens old, through flowery alleys,
Still they live—those gleams of Paradise:
Dim, too dim, alas! for aught but feeling,
Light,—too light for mind to hold them long;
Only now and then a form revealing,
Summoned by the magic spell of Song.
On the lakes where morning mists arise,
Or in gardens old, through flowery alleys,
Still they live—those gleams of Paradise:
Dim, too dim, alas! for aught but feeling,
Light,—too light for mind to hold them long;
Only now and then a form revealing,
Summoned by the magic spell of Song.
143
For the artist is the true magician!
Form may die, but harmony still lives;
Death and Time may take away volition,
Not the reflex which true beauty gives
To Art creative—and thus every poet
Who brings soul-music forth with many a pain,
Like her of Endor, though he may not know it,
To others shows the glorious dead again.
Form may die, but harmony still lives;
Death and Time may take away volition,
Not the reflex which true beauty gives
To Art creative—and thus every poet
Who brings soul-music forth with many a pain,
Like her of Endor, though he may not know it,
To others shows the glorious dead again.
| The music-lesson of Confucius, And Other Poems | |