Laurella and other poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

In the waning-time of the autumn
We sat in the dusk—we three;
On glasses emptied of Rhine-wine,
The fire gleamed fitfully.
Ghostly and huge our shadows
Went wavering over the wall,
And hushed by the Twilight-Spirit,
Silence possessed us all.

II.

We heard but the tranquil flowing
Of grand old Father-Rhine,
And the wailful coming and going
Of wind through the aisles of pine.
We sat in the dusk and pondered,
Each lone with his lonely heart,
Ah! when shall we meet, we wondered,
We three, whom to-night must part?

III.

At last when between the pine-trees
The moon rose large and red,
Up started Fritz from his musing,
But never a word he said,
Never a word; but sighing
He past to his room within,
And a voice rang clear through the twilight,
The voice of his violin.

IV.

We knew it well:—it had thrilled us
A thousand times or more;
But now! what fine transport filled us?
It never spake thus before!
It came like a revelation,
That shrill, small, passionate voice,
Sublimed in its exaltation,
Wild woes—ineffable joys.

V.

Keen bliss ran shuddering through us,
And anguish of deep delight,
On wings of the great Tone-Angel
Our spirits were rapt that night.
No awful beauty of dawning,
No tender freshness of morn,

No solemn glory of sunset,
No sweetness of stars new-born,
Nor grandeur of calm-crowned mountains,
Nor river's majestic flow,
Nor balmy sadness of pine-woods,
Recall that adagio!

VI.

It rose, as a quaint arch rises,
In curves of delicate strength;
In languor of sweet surprises
It sighed itself out at length.
And then for one golden moment
The silence alone we heard,
And tranced in that blissful moment,
We neither spoke nor stirred.

VII.

Anon, like a sudden tempest
That swoops upon silent trees,
In moonless glades of the forest,
With shriek of strange agonies,
The wrath of his terrible bowing
Made vocal the strings within;
It moved us, beyond things human,
The wail of that violin!

VIII.

What demon possessed its master?
What madness wrought in his brain,
As, whirling faster and faster,
The senses reeled to the strain?
No nightmare-ridden, who, clinging
O'er some infernal abyss,
Grows dizzy with deathful singing,
Half hearing the snake-fiend's hiss;
No lover who stands death-stricken
At sight of his lady's death,
E'er felt all his soul more sicken
Than we, as we held our breath.

IX.

But ever, above the rushing
And agony of the strings,
There soared a strain, like the rainbow
That over a torrent springs,—
A strain like that transient iris
Which gleams and again grows pale,
But wavers not from its poising
However the hues may fail.

X.

At first it was but a yearning,
Half-lost in the fierce unrest,

Returning and still returning,
Unshattered and unreprest—
So pure, so ghostly, so tender,
So fraught with delicious tears,
So full of unearthly splendour,
'Twill live in our dying ears;
Returning and still returning—
Was ever a strain like this
For sadness of infinite yearning,
For fervour of infinite bliss?

XI.

At length, waxed brighter and brighter,
It filled our hearts with its light;
The whirl of that terrible music
No longer could vex the night,
Crescendo and still crescendo,
Outraying joy through the gloom,
It blazed to its ultimate triumph,
Then Fritz came back from his room.

XII.

And we? I scarce durst greet him,
So rapt was his face, so pale;
But Gottfried sprang up to meet him
With ‘Ruler of spirits, hail!
Great master, come and be chidden;
He merits no less, I vow,

Whose bushel so long has hidden
Such light as we wot of now!’

XIII.

And Fritz sat down in the moonlight:
‘To-night we three must part—
And a drear voice whispers, “Forever!”
The voice of my boding heart;
But ere we take leave forever,
Fill round to old Father-Rhine,
And list to the wonderful story
Of this wonderful theme of mine.

XIV.

‘In the Schwarzwald beside a river
A lonely cottage stood,
The river rolled by forever,
Above waved ever the wood;
And there in the gloom of the forest
Was born a bright-haired boy,
Through whom, when their need was sorest,
Two hearts were made one in joy.

XV.

‘And there in the haunted forest
He lived and grew strong—that child,
His masters the frank wood-spirits,
His playmates all glad things wild.

Self-weaned from his mother's kisses,
He roamed all day like an elf,
With song, and shouting, and laughter,
Or silent, lay by himself,
Deep-hidden beneath the pine-trees,
In trances of blissful awe
(Some folk say hearing and seeing
What none ever heard or saw).
But hugely he loved at twilight
To climb on his father's knees,
Or sit at his mother's footstool,
Discoursing them mysteries:
Then often some brave old Volkslied,
Flung free in three careless parts,
Would tell how throbbed in their cottage
That trio of happy hearts.

XVI.

‘But soon the kind years brought him
Their seasons of joy supreme,
When his sun-burnt father taught him
His wood-craft of glade and stream:
And down the mysterious river
They rafted it, down and down,
New wonders sailed by forever,
And then the long-dreamed-of town!

And there, blest beyond all measure,
New life stirred the life within;
There found he a fairy-treasure—
God gave him a violin!

XVII.

‘Years passed—his innermost nature
Was known to those haunted trees;
In rapture of earnest music
He poured his soliloquies—
All anguish of aspiration,
All passion of deep love-dreams,
All throes of the virgin spirit
Took form in fantastic themes.

XVIII.

‘'Twas autumn. At twilight falling
His hair with strange awe was stirred;
Faint whispers, low voices calling,
Soft sighing of harps he heard:
With shuddering of heart and swelling,
He followed their ghostly guide,
Till far from his father's dwelling
He stood by the river-side.
Sullen the clouds were rolling
Away from the chilly west,
Nought tendering and nought consoling
Brought peace in the vague unrest;

But all was pallor and bleakness—
A menace—a phantom dread—
A mockery of his weakness
Hung hatefully o'er his head.

XIX.

‘And filled with despair and yearning,
And choking with unshed tears,
He longed for death that might hide him
From horror of coming years;
Till sternly, as in defiance,
He lifted himself from woe,
And poured to God in his torment
That solemn adagio.

XX.

‘Sudden the deeps of heaven
Were full of splendour and sound;
Outleapt the might of the levin,
The thunders were all unbound.
O the fierce bliss of lightning
Which spirits heroic know!
Through fingers tingling and tight'ning
It wrought in his fiddle-bow.
Death-pale with sublime self-scorning
And impulse of warrior-glee,
As Jacob wrestled till morning
For blessing, so wrestled he:

But none ever knew what vision
He saw in that holy place—
Thereafter his dreams Elysian
Were filled with one woman's face.

XXI.

‘Years passed. He wandered—still wandered,
But never in joy or pain,
For thinking, or longing, or striving,
That music would come again.
He wandered abroad—still wandered,
Impatient, from place to place,
In search of that long-lost music—
In search of that ne'er-found face.

XXII.

‘It came at last—the fruition
Of years of sorrow and toil—
The world had its one musician,
Too pure for the world to spoil;—
It came—that face! Its divineness
Made heaven in the concert-room;
Half languid in lone benignness
Those pure deep eyes of his doom!
O this fierce bliss of lightning,
How sings the blood in its glow!
Thro' fingers tingling and tight'ning
It wrought in his fiddle-bow.

His love, at last! He had found her!
Outleaped that theme like a flame,
And fast in its love-spell bound her:
His bride was his crown of fame.

XXIII.

‘That bride, O friends, was my mother,
My father that child of light,
That mystic theme was none other
Than that ye have heard to-night.
That strain was his swan-song dying
(Once more to our dear old Rhine!)
My father's’—he ended, sighing,—
‘Who knows but it may be mine?’

XXIV.

And so we took leave forever—
Fate spoke in his boding vein,
For never on earth, O never,
That theme shall be heard again!