Classic Poem

When sounds an air that thrills your ears
With memories of bygone years,
Forgetting age and care and pain,
The soul puts on its youth again;
And she who shone in beauty's pride,
Long faded, sparkles at your side;
And as in spring old wines ferment
When buds and leaves on vines are blent,
So through your quickened pulses pour
The effervescent joys of yore.
Again her name drops from your lip
Into the brimming cup you sip;
Nay, in the amber wine you trace
The image of her cherished face.
O days of youth and wild delight!
O gladdening waters, sweet as bright,
Which memory's melodious spells
Uncover like the desert's wells!

Another sits in gloom and pain
Whilst you drink in the rapturous strain.
As East winds open ancient wounds,
His bleed afresh at those sweet sounds;
It is the air, that lured him on
To wretchedness in days bygone,
Which now relumes the witching gaze
Of those dark eyes whose treacherous rays
To ashes burnt his youth so fair,
And left his life one long despair,
Renewed, as with those notes arise
His heart's burnt-offerings to the skies,
And leave it, when the strains expire,
An altar blackened by the fire
The sun grows pale, the air is chill,
Grim skeletons his vision fill;
In death no greater terrors lie,
For thus to suffer is to die.

Now, like fond brothers, hand in hand,
Both tread some fair and unknown strand,
In measure; when the magic wand
Of S CHUMANN sways the tuneful band,
Or W AGNER'S glorious voices smite
The ear, and unsipped joys unlock,
As when the patriarch Israelite
With faith-borne rod struck Horeb's rock.

One, wafted to the fairy isle
On ocean's softest summer smile;
One, 'scaped with life and nothing more
From ocean's fiercest wintry roar:
Both drink its odours, breeze-beguiled
From thicket and savanna wild;
Both taste its tropic fruitage filled
With sweetness from the sun distilled:
Both bask in blooms that never change
From sea-side up to mountain range;
Till to their ravished senses seem
Life's bliss and bale an equal dream,
And each, in ecstasy, forgets
The past — its joys and its regrets.