THE VALLEY OF MUSIC
I
Oh, cool as the flutter of fountains,
And fresh as the fall of the dew,
Wet as the hues of the rain-arch,
In that vale, is the dawn, when, o'er mountains,
Pearl-peaked and hyaline blue,
Through the Memnonian blue,
Her spirit, like music, comes slowly,
A music of light and of fire,
Leaving her footsteps in roses
There on its summits, while holy,
Fair on her brow is her tire,
Gemmed with the morning-star's fire.
II
And still as the incense of altars,
And dim as the deeps of a cloud,
Mystic as winds of the woodlands,
In that vale, is the night when she falters
In the sorrowful folds of her shroud,
The far-blowing dusk of her shroud,
By the scarlet-strewn bier of her lover,
The day, lying faded and fair
In his chamber of purple and vair.—
When, above it, you see her uncover
Her star-girdled darkness of hair—
Gold-hooped with the gold of the even—
And for the day's burial prepare,
The spirit of night in the heaven,
O'er that vale, is most hauntingly fair;
So fair that you wish it were given
That you in the rays of her hair,
Might die! in her gold-girdled hair.
III
There lies in a valley, where mountains
Have walled it from all that is ours,
A garden entangled with flowers;
Where the whisper of echoing fountains
Makes song in the balm-breathing bowers:
Where torrents, plunged down from wild masses
Of granite, from cavern-pierced steeps,
With thunders sonorous cleave passes,
And madden the world with their leaps,
The clamorous foam of their leaps.
IV
And, oh! when the sunlight comes heaping
With glitter the mist of those chasms,
The foam of those musical chasms,
You may hear a lamenting and weeping,
And see in the vastness far sweeping,
In wild and æolian spasms,
Down, down in those voluble chasms,
The Spirits of Light and of Darkness.
And the wave from the gray-hearted granite
In rivers rolls rippling around;
Meanders through shade-haunted forests,
Where many rock-barriers can span it,
And dash it in froth and in sound;
Where the nights with their great moons can wan it,
Or star its dark stillness profound.
V
And here with her harp doth she wander,
That daughter of music, twice kissed
Of the Spirits of Love and of Sorrow:
Yea, here doth she wander and ponder,
That maiden of moonlight and mist,
With starlight on hair and on wrist;
Yea, here doth she ponder and wander
'Mid blossoms with loveliness whist,
'Mid moonlight with fragrances kissed.
And ever her being grows fonder
Of forests where phantoms keep tryst,
The people of moon and of mist:
And often they troop to her singing,
As she sits 'mid the undulant cedars—
All savage of wildness and scent—
Whose tops to her beauty are bent,
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
In worship and testament:
Like the pennons and plumes of fierce leaders,
All ragged with battle and rent.
VI
And oft when the moon, like a palace
Of witchcraft, shines white overhead,
Making pearl of the foam of the torrent,
She wakes her wild harp in the valleys
Where the blossoms have built her a bed:
She sits where a fountain of flowers
Rains fragrance from branches around,
The blossomed lianas around,
Keeping time with their petal-sweet showers
To her harp; with its strain interwound;
Unfolding, it seems, to the sound:
While her song is as redolence round her,
And their fragrance as music, it seems,
Whose touch and enchantment have bound her
With shadows and whispers of dreams,
And she seems but a part of her dreams,
A creature created of dreams.
VII
One night as she whispered and wandered
In her garden of music and flowers,
She saw, in a ray of the moonlight,
A youth fast asleep 'mid the flowers;
A youth on a mantle of satin,
A poppy-red robe 'mid the flowers.
VIII
Love housed 'neath his eyelids, that, slender
As petals of roses, were pale:
She bent and she kissed them and, tender,
She murmured and bade them unveil,
The blossoms beneath them unveil.
And he woke and beheld her and panted:—
“At last I behold thee, O Song!
O beautiful, pitiless Song!
Thou, thou, who so wildly enchanted,
And led me, eluded me long!
Evaded and lured me so long!”
IX
Then she knelt on the mantle of satin,
And plunged a long look in his eyes:
She knelt on the mantle of scarlet,
And kissed him on mouth and on eyes,
And mingled her soul with his sighs.
And then in a moment she knew it,—
He deemed her a part of his dream;
And she smiled and she said, “I am Music!
And thy soul—'twas my spirit that drew it,
Thy soul, with a mystical gleam,
A brightness, a glimmer, a gleam.”
X
And he gazed at her strangely; and, sobbing,
Cried out, “Yea; thy harp!—is it strung?
Thy harp of wild gold, is it strung?
With fingers of silver set throbbing
Its chords with that song thou hast sung,
So oft in my dreams thou hast sung.”
XI
Then he ceased:—and his eyes—how they glistened!
His eyes, that were haunted with pain,
With longing and beauty and pain:
And again he cried out, “Oh, that music!
That proud and that perilous music!
O God! for that tyrannous strain,
To which in my dreams I have listened,
Ah, God! I have listened in vain!”
And he tossed on the mantle of satin
His deep raven darkness of hair;
And the song at her lips was ungathered,
And she sat there to marvel and stare;
Like marble, to wonder and stare.
XII
Then there welled from her lips all the glory
Of music delirious with words;
Of music that told the heart's story,
And trembled with God-given words,
And rang like the crossing of swords.
And it seemed that the spirit of Beauty
Swept through it with farewells and sighs;
The spirits of Beauty and Duty,
And Love with his beautiful eyes;
And Heaven, and Hell with its cries;
Sad Hell with a tempest of cries.
XIII
The rapture was there of all passion;
The heartache of all we have lost:
The sweetness was there that we fashion
From love we have won or have lost,
Its terror, its torment, and cost.
And over it all was a fury
Of wings that seemed beating above,
Of stars and of winds and the glory
Of God and the splendor of love,
The splendor and triumph of love.
XIV
And then, from her poppy wings, Slumber
Dropped petals of sleep on his eyes;
The Spirit of Slumber with pinions
Of vaporous silver, whose flutter
Had mixed with the music's wild number,
Lured down from the shadowy skies;
Lured down from her drowsy dominions,
To nest in his tired-out eyes.
XV
And in sleep he cried out to her,—stilling
A moment the rush of her song,
The rainbowing torrent of song,—
“Cease! cease! for the rapture is killing!
The glory of light is too strong!—
Oh, cease! make an end of thy song!”—
But she, with the frenzy o'erflowing,
Cried out in an anguish of passion,
“Thy soul shall be one with my song,
With me and the soul of my song.
Take my hand! let us walk in the glowing
Sweet heaven and hell of all song;
Where the torrents of music are flowing,
The rivers of music and song.
Take my hand! Dost thou hear? We are going!
We, too, to God's splendor belong!
Let us walk in the light of His song,
The thunder and flame of His song.”
XVI
Then she flung in her song the emotion,
Triumphant, of heart and of soul;
Till the passion and pain were an ocean
That swept her with billowing roll,
As it seemed, to abysses of dole,
Abysses of infinite dole.
XVII
And paler than moonlight and marble
He lay on the red of that robe,
Lay white at her feet on the scarlet,
With silence-sealed lips and the glitter
Of tears in each violet globe
Of his eyes.—And she said: “It is bitter
To see him so still on this robe,
Like marble so still on this robe.”
Then she knelt and cried out, “Art thou living?
Or dead?—Have I slain thee with song?—
I gave thee the best in my giving,
But all that I gave thee seems wrong!—
No blessing, a curse was my song!
A curse and a sorrow my song!”
XVIII
And she shattered her harp in her madness,
And rent at her breasts and her hair;
Then kissed him on mouth and on temples,
And spoke to him smoothing the sadness,
The calm of his brow that was fair,
Was perfect and hopelessly fair.
Then she wailed to the stars in the heaven,
And railed at her song as a thief,
Calling out, “For a curse wast thou given!
Yea, thou! for a curse and a grief!
A curse and an infinite grief!”
XIX
And the moon, it went down like a broken
Great dagger of gold in the west;
Like a dagger of gold that was broken,
Her dagger of song, that had spoken,
And pierced with its beauty his breast,
Had ravished his soul from his breast.
And she lay with her hair, deep and golden,
Thick showered and shaken on his;
Her arms around him were enfolden;
Her lips clave to his with a kiss,
The love and the grief of a kiss.
