Classic Poem

Maker of songs, what weariness
Upon thy sleepless eyelid weighs?
Maker of songs, what silence lays
Cold hand upon thy lips that bless?
The fallen leaves about thy feet
Are mute beneath the questioning
Of air that finds no song to greet.
Why dost thou listen and not sing?

We cannot see the dreams that rise
Before those darkened eyes of thine;
We cannot hear the voice that cries
Unto thy silence, all divine.
There weighs upon our eagerness,
Our straining eyes that fain would see, —
Thoughts, wingless, that would follow thee,
Maker of songs, what weariness!

" Face to face with my soul there stands
A Song — nor may I call her name,
Nor know from what far place she came;
I may not take her by the hands.
Not wholly wrought, she faces me,
But like an image incomplete,
And ever smiles, inscrutably,
A smile whose mystery is sweet.
The slow, wan smile that curves her lips
Might brood upon the face of one
Standing forever in the sun,
A watcher of the unseen ships.

" (O lightless eyes whose light I wait,
Dim smile that tells of listening,
On what far, perfect day shall fate
Breathe through thy soul and bid thee sing?)
I wait the nearing mystery;
Ye look to me, nor understand.
For eyes unborn an alien land, —
So Life looks out, to Death, the Sea."