Classic Poem

If this my pen
Has ever seemed to move aright
And faithfully indite
Words that have come from bournes beyond my ken, —
Give no more praise to me
Than should his portion be
Whose fingers, with a wondering delight,
Move among viol-strings
And seek to give again
The fruits of greater minds' imaginings, —
Music that is the dower of all men.

For I am only he
Who seeks again to give,
Without initiative,
Faint melodies that, deep within his brain,
With joy that is half pain,
Sound echoed from the rapturous, distant throng
Of festivals that to all time belong.

Alas! my halting pen
Never may purely give that song again.
Alas! the clownish hand
Whose fingers hover,
Fretting the string,
But powerless to recover
From music's wonderland
More than this harsher remnant-thing,
From what, — compact of Heaven's own dew and light
And murmurs of the bright,
The vast, harmonious, eternal main, —
The Lord of beauty set within this brain
For this my hand to echo how it can,
Crudely translating into coarser tone,
To sound above life's roar to every man,
Music no man may claim as his alone.