Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/357

Rh The shadow hands repeating every motion.

Then did I voyage forth on music's ocean,

Visiting many a sad or joyful shore,

Where storming breakers roar,

Or singing birds made music so intense,—

So intimate of happiness or sorrow,—

I scarce could courage borrow

To hear those strains: well-nigh I hurried thence

To escape the intolerable weight

That on my spirit fell when sobbed the music: late, too late, too late!

While slow withdrew the light

And, on the lyric tide, came in the night.

II

So grew the dark, enshrouding all the room

In a melodious gloom,

Her face growing viewless; line by line

That swaying form did momently decline

And was in darkness lost.

Then white hands ghostly turned, tho' still they tost

From tone to tone; pauseless and sure as if in perfect light;

With blind, instinctive, most miraculous sight,

On, on they sounded in that world of night.

III

Ah, dearest one; was this thy thought, as mine,

As still the music stayed?

"So shall the loved ones fade,—

Feature by feature, line on lovely line;

For all our love, alas,

From twilight into darkness shall they pass!

We in that dark shall see them nevermore,