Classic Poem

Her tapering fingers from the keys
Purloined such dulcet harmonies,
That scarce the drowsy chords awoke,
But seemed to murmur in their sleep,
Until like troops when day hath broke,
To arms at the reveille who leap,
Her touch aroused an unseen host,
The voices of a Pentecost,
A host that in consent obeyed
The incantation of the maid.

But how portray the spirit's mood
Controlling that melodious brood?
Hath Fancy moulded yet a shape
Worthy her tenderness to drape,
As in those years of dolls and toys
The mimicry of later joys?
Or is she the unconscious bird
Which sings, and cares not to be heard?

Ah, no, the cager chords relate
The feelings glad or desolate
Of one whose wayward life hath been
A mystery to his fellow-men;
A monarch in the realms of tone,
Now cinctured by a priestly zone,
Who every gamut, every scale,
To Alpine height from Alpine dale,
In human life hath sobbed or sung.

As brooks in pensive beauty glide
To mingle in the breakers' roar,
But homeward with the turning tide
Some truant drops regain the shore,—
So he, his native hills among,
Now tunes the lyre his life hath strung.
And that wild life to her unknown
Her fingers trace; as on the stone
That marks a grave its legend sad
We read, nor know the good or bad
That throbbed and wrought ere tearless Death
Laid low the crumbling frame beneath.