Classic Poem

" Your inspiration is still to you a living mistress — make her immortal in her promptings and her consolations by imaging her truly in art. Mine looks at me with eyes of paler flame and beckons across a gulf. You came into my loneliness like an incarnate aspiration. And it is dreary enough sometimes, for a mountain-peak on whose snow your foot makes the first mortal print is not so lonely as a room full of happy faces from which one is missing forever. This was originally the fifth stanza of The Windharp .

Forgive me, but you spoke of it first. " J.R.L. to W. J. Stillman, December 7, 1854.

I TREASURE in secret some long, fine hair
Of tenderest brown, but so inwardly golden
I half used to fancy the sunshine there,
So shy, so shifting, so waywardly rare,
Was only caught for the moment and holden
While I could say Dearest! and kiss it, and then
In pity let go to the summer again.

I twisted this magic in gossamer strings
Over a wind-harp's Delphian hollow;
Then called to the idle breeze that swings
All day in the pine-tops, and clings, and sings
'Mid the musical leaves, and said, " Oh, follow
The will of those tears that deepen my words,
And fly to my window to waken these chords. "

So they trembled to life, and, doubtfully
Feeling their way to my sense, sang, " Say whether
They sit all day by the greenwood tree,
The lover and loved, as it wont to be,
When we — " But grief conquered, and all together
They swelled such weird murmur as haunts a shore
Of some planet dispeopled, — " Nevermore! "

Then from deep in the past, as seemed to me,
The strings gathered sorrow and sang forsaken,
" One lover still waits 'neath the greenwood tree,
But 't is dark, " and they shuddered, " where lieth she
Dark and cold! Forever must one be taken? "
But I groaned, " O harp of all ruth bereft,
This Scripture is sadder, — " the other left"! "

There murmured, as if one strove to speak,
And tears came instead; then the sad tones wandered
And faltered among the uncertain chords
In a troubled doubt between sorrow and words;
At last with themselves they questioned and pondered,
" Hereafter? — who knoweth? " and so they sighed
Down the long steps that lead to silence and died.

" Your inspiration is still to you a living mistress — make her immortal in her promptings and her consolations by imaging her truly in art. Mine looks at me with eyes of paler flame and beckons across a gulf. You came into my loneliness like an incarnate aspiration. And it is dreary enough sometimes, for a mountain-peak on whose snow your foot makes the first mortal print is not so lonely as a room full of happy faces from which one is missing forever. This was originally the fifth stanza of The Windharp .

Forgive me, but you spoke of it first. " J.R.L. to W. J. Stillman, December 7, 1854.

I TREASURE in secret some long, fine hair
Of tenderest brown, but so inwardly golden
I half used to fancy the sunshine there,
So shy, so shifting, so waywardly rare,
Was only caught for the moment and holden
While I could say Dearest! and kiss it, and then
In pity let go to the summer again.

I twisted this magic in gossamer strings
Over a wind-harp's Delphian hollow;
Then called to the idle breeze that swings
All day in the pine-tops, and clings, and sings
'Mid the musical leaves, and said, " Oh, follow
The will of those tears that deepen my words,
And fly to my window to waken these chords. "

So they trembled to life, and, doubtfully
Feeling their way to my sense, sang, " Say whether
They sit all day by the greenwood tree,
The lover and loved, as it wont to be,
When we — " But grief conquered, and all together
They swelled such weird murmur as haunts a shore
Of some planet dispeopled, — " Nevermore! "

Then from deep in the past, as seemed to me,
The strings gathered sorrow and sang forsaken,
" One lover still waits 'neath the greenwood tree,
But 't is dark, " and they shuddered, " where lieth she
Dark and cold! Forever must one be taken? "
But I groaned, " O harp of all ruth bereft,
This Scripture is sadder, — " the other left"! "

There murmured, as if one strove to speak,
And tears came instead; then the sad tones wandered
And faltered among the uncertain chords
In a troubled doubt between sorrow and words;
At last with themselves they questioned and pondered,
" Hereafter? — who knoweth? " and so they sighed
Down the long steps that lead to silence and died.