(AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING UPON THE
MUSICAL INSTRUMENT OF HIS INVENTION)
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music
I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys
to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when
Solomon° willed °3
Armies of angels that soar, legions of
demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end
and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high,
hell-deep removed,—
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable
Name,
And pile him a palace° straight, to pleasure
the princess he loved! °8
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building
of mine,
This which my keys in a crowd pressed
and importuned to raise! 10
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now
and now combine,
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their
master his praise!
And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down
to hell,
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the
roots of things,
Then up again swim into sight, having based me my
palace well,
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on
the nether springs.
And another would mount and march, like the excellent
minion he was,
Ay, another and yet another, one crowd
but with many a crest,
Raising my rampired° walls of gold as transparent
as glass, °19
Eager to do and die, yield each his place
to the rest: 20
For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with
fire,
When a great illumination surprises a
festal night—
Outlining round and round Rome’s dome° from
space to spire) °23
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the
pride of my soul was in sight.
In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain,
to match man’s birth,
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse
as I;
And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to
reach the earth.
As the earth had done her best, in my
passion, to scale the sky:
Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt
with mine.
Not a point nor peak but found and fixed
its wandering star; 30
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not
pale nor pine,
For earth had attained to heaven, there
was no more near nor far.
Nay more; for there wanted not who walked, in the
glare and glow,
Presences plain in the place; or, fresh,
from the Protoplast,
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should
blow,
Lured now to begin and live, in a house
to their liking at last:
Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed thro’
the body and gone,
But were back once more to breathe in
an old world worth their new:
What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall
be anon;
And what is,—shall I say, matched
both? for I was made perfect too. 40
All thro’ my keys that gave their sounds to
a wish of my soul,
All thro’ my soul that praised as
its wish flowed visibly forth,
All thro’ music and me! For think, had
I painted the whole,
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the
process so wonder-worth:
Had I written the same, made verse—still,
effect proceeds from cause,
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear
how the tale is told;
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to
laws,
Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list
enrolled:—
But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will
that can,
Existent behind all laws, that made them,
and, lo, they are! 50
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed
to man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not
a fourth sound, but a star.
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself
is naught;
It is everywhere in the world—loud,
soft, and all is said:
Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my
thought,
And, there! Ye have heard and seen;
consider and bow the head!
Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;
Gone! and the good tears start, the praises
that come too slow;
For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that
he feared,
That he even gave it a thought, the gone
thing was to go. 60
Never to be again! But many more of the kind
As good, nay, better perchance: is
this your comfort to me?
To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind
To the same, same self, same love, same
God: ay, what was, shall be.
Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable
Name?
Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not
made with hands!
What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the
same?
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart
that Thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good! What was,
shall live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence
implying sound; 70
What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much
good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven,
a perfect round.
All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall
exist;
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty,
nor good, nor power
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for
the melodist,
When eternity affirms the conception of
an hour.
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth
too hard.
The passion that left the ground to lose
itself in the sky,
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;
Enough that he heard it once; we shall
hear it by and by. 80
And what is our failure here but a triumph’s
evidence
For the fulness of the days? Have
we withered or agonized?
Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing
might issue thence?
Why rushed the discords in but that harmony
should be prized?
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme
of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear;
The rest may reason and welcome; ’tis
we musicians know.
Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:
I will be patient and proud, and soberly
acquiesce. 90
Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord
again,
Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the
minor,—yes,
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien
ground,
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled
from into the deep:
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place
is found,
The C Major of this life: so, now
I will try to sleep.
* * * *
*
