Classic Poem

(In memory of an evening at Richard Watson Gilder's home)

Beneath the bow
Your live cords, ' cello mio , throb and stir, —
My viol-like, dreamful child of Gasparo, —
Raising from reverie your Lombard voice,
And bidding us rejoice,
In all the things of soul and sense that make
These beauty-consecrated chambers glow
As though they were
In your ancestral home by Garda lake.

Now, as beneath the tense exultant fingers,
The music flows or lingers,
The presence of the viol passes quite;
And, for a little space,
Rapt out of touch and sight,
With Bach the master I am face to face,

And now,
In ways unlike the laboured ways of earth —
I know not how —
That part of man which is most worth
Comes forth at call of this old sarabande
And lays a spirit-hand
With mine upon the strings that understand.

Our painter lends his palette to a tone
That is no more mine own.
Lo! he that " from the sterile womb of stone
Raises up children unto God " is there
To make the sarabande in form more fair;
And our dear poet with the glowing eyes
Brings to the shrine of tone his evening sacrifice;
While, filling all the place, below, above,
There radiates the starlight of my love.

O comrade heart, shall life be thus when we —
Beyond the portal of eternity —
Shall enter into that long extasy?

Shall we float thus upon a flood of tone,
Discumbered of these garments long outgrown,
Alone, yet gloriously un-alone?

Yes, love, we shall relive this great to-day,
When our sheer souls, in the immortal way,
Have uttered what our lips might never say.