Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/156

128 PART V

MUSIC AND WORDS

I

day I heard such music that I thought:

Hath human speech the power thus to be wrought,

Into such melody,—pure, sensuous sound,—

Into such mellow, murmuring mazes caught;

Can words (I said), when these keen tones are bound

(Silent, except in memory of this hour)—

Can human words alone usurp the power

Of trembling strings that thrill to the very soul,

And of this ecstasy bring back the whole?

II

Ah, no ('t was answered in my inmost heart),

Unto itself sufficient is each art,

And each doth utter what none other can—

Some hidden mood of the large soul of man.

Ah, think not thou with words well interweaved

To wake the tones wherein the viol grieved

With its most heavy burden; think not thou,

Adventurous, to push thy shallop's prow

Into that surge of well-remembered tones,

Striving to match each wandering wind that moans,

Each bell that tolls, and every bugle's blowing

With some most fitting word, some verse bestowing

A never-shifting form on that which past

Swift as a bird that glimmers down the blast.

III

So, still unworded, save in memory mute,

Rest thou sweet hour of viol and of lute;