Classic Poem

( IN A HOUSE NEAR SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA )

Brave 'forty-niner, whom of light
And uneventful modern hours
Each brings, allusive, recondite,
Some thrill of olden hopes and powers —

Dull rosewood, with your yellow keys
By yearning, toiling fingers worn,
You quiver yet with harmonies
Of seas that wash the wintry Horn;

And every idle, swinging door,
Each step unsoft that stirs the room,
Reminds you of a surf-loud shore
And sad chords of the breakers' boom.

Sometimes within your carven shell
Wistful the vibrant voices go,
And unremembered people dwell
Beyond your fretted portico.

What spirit of the adventurous years,
Having spent life for gold instead,
Claims here too late his long arrears
Of love and music forfeited?

The restless grandsire with you blown
Around sea-beaten continents —
Finds he no voice where he has gone
Like yours he answers to from thence?