Page:Poet Lore, volume 35, 1924.pdf/397

 ( runs in. The reflection from the burning torches without glows in the room.

Anezka—Father! Listen, listen, father! They are calling you! They are doing this in your honor! (Looking around) Where is father? Has he gone away? Is he in the room? (Sees her father lying on the ground) Merciful Heavens! Father! (Runs and kneels beside him, raising his head. A piercing scream.) Father! He is dead!

There is an air for which I would exchange

Rossini, Mozart, Weber, one and all—

An ancient tune, drowsy, funeral,

That stirs me with a charm remote and strange.

For every time I hear it played it seems

Two hundred years slip from my world-worn soul:

Louis XIII still reigns—the yellow beams

Of sunset kiss a little grassy knoll.

Then a brick castle with stone corners shows

Its windows pageanted with rosy hue,

Girdled with spreading parks; a river flows

Bathing its feet, the flowering meadows through.

Then to its topmost window comes a lady

Blond, with dark eyes, apparelled as of yore,

Whom in some long-forgotten life, it may be,

I saw!—and I remember evermore!