Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/285

Rh Making that fearful as the touch of pain;

It strikes the sunlit plain,

And harvests flash, or bend with rushing rain;

It is not far when tempests make their moan,

And lightnings leap, and bursts the thunder-stone.

It comes in morning's beam of living light,

And the imperial night

Knows it, and all its company of stars,

And the auroral bars.

Through nature all, the subtile current thrills;

It built in flood and fire the crystal hills;

It molds the flowers,

And all the branchèd forests that abide

Forever on the teeming mountain-side.

It lives where music times the soft, processional hours;

And where on that lone hill of art

Proud Phidias carved in stone his lyric heart;

And where wild battle is, and where

Glad lovers breathe in starry night the quivering air.

THE SONG'S ANSWER

THE 'CELLO

late I heard the trembling 'cello play,

In every face I read sad memories

That from dark, secret chambers where they lay

Rose, and looked forth from melancholy eyes.