Page:Lyrics of Life, Coates, 1909.djvu/133



gave me all, and then he laid me by.

Straining my strings to breaking, with his pain,

He voiced an anguish, through my wailing cry,

Never to speak again.

He pressed his cheek against me, and he wept—

Had we been glad together over much?—

Emotions that within me deep had slept

Grew vibrant at his touch,

And I, who could not ask whence sprung his sorrow

Responsive to a grief I might not know,

Sobbed as the infant that each mood doth borrow

Sobs for the mother's woe.

Wild grew my voice and stormy, with his passion,

Lifted at last unto a tragic might;

Then swift it changed, in sad and subtile fashion,

To pathos infinite,

Swooning away beneath his faltering fingers

Till the grieved plaints seemed, echoless, to die;

When, calm, he rose, and with a touch that lingers,

Laid me forever by.