Page:May-day and other pieces, Emerson, 1867.djvu/44

32 Gay for youth, gay for youth,

(Sweet is art, but sweeter truth,)

In the hall at summer eve

Fate and Beauty skilled to weave.

From the eager opening strings

Rung loud and bold the song.

Who but loved the wind-harp's note?

How should not the poet doat

On its mystic tongue,

With its primeval memory,

Reporting what old minstrels said

Of Merlin locked the harp within,—

Merlin paying the pain of sin,

Pent in a dungeon made of air,—

And some attain his voice to hear,

Words of pain and cries of fear,

But pillowed all on melody,

As fits the griefs of bards to be.

And what if that all-echoing shell,