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| WOULD that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, | |
| Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, | |
| Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon will’d | |
| Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, | |
| Man, brute, reptile, fly,—alien of end and of aim, | 5 |
| Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep remov’d,— | |
| Should rush into sight at once as he nam’d the ineffable Name, | |
| And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he lov’d! | |
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| Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine, | |
| This which my keys in a crowd press’d and importun’d to raise! | 10 |
| Ah, one and all, how they help’d, would dispart now and now combine, | |
| Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise! | |
| And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell, | |
| Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things, | |
| Then up again swim into sight, having bas’d me my palace well, | 15 |
| Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs. | |
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| And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was, | |
| Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest, | |
| Raising my rampir’d walls of gold as transparent as glass, | |
| Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest: | 20 |
| For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire, | |
| When a great illumination surprises a festal night— | |
| Outlining round and round Rome’s dome from space to spire) | |
| Up, the pinnacled glory reach’d, and the pride of my soul was in sight. | |
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| In sight? Not half! for it seem’d it was certain, to match man’s birth, | 25 |
| Nature in turn conceiv’d, obeying an impulse as I; | |
| And the emulous heaven yearn’d down, made effort to reach the earth, | |
| As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky: | |
| Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine, | |
| Not a point nor peak but found, but fix’d its wandering star; | 30 |
| Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine, | |
| For earth had attain’d to heaven, there was no more near nor far. | |
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| Nay more; for there wanted not who walk’d in the glare and glow, | |
| Presences plain in the place; or, fresh from the Protoplast, | |
| Furnish’d for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow, | 35 |
| Lur’d now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last; | |
| Or else the wonderful Dead who have pass’d through the body and gene, | |
| But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new: | |
| What never had been, was now; what was as it shall be anon; | |
| And what is,—shall I say, match’d both? for I was made perfect too. | 40 |
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| All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul, | |
| All through my soul that prais’d as its wish flow’d visibly forth, | |
| All through music and me! For think, had I painted the whole, | |
| Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth. | |
| Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause, | 45 |
| Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told; | |
| It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws, | |
| Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list enroll’d:— | |
| |
| But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, | |
| Existent behind all laws: that made them, and, lo, they are! | 50 |
| And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allow’d to man, | |
| That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star. | |
| Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought; | |
| It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said: | |
| Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought, | 55 |
| And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head! | |
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| Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I rear’d; | |
| Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow; | |
| For one is assur’d at first, one scarce can say that he fear’d, | |
| That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go. | 60 |
| Never to be again! But many more of the kind | |
| As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me? | |
| To me, who must be sav’d because I cling with my mind | |
| To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be. | |
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| Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name? | 65 |
| Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands! | |
| What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same? | |
| Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power expands? | |
| There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before; | |
| The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; | 70 |
| What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; | |
| On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round. | |
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| All we have will’d or hop’d or dream’d of good, shall exist; | |
| Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power | |
| Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist, | 75 |
| When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. | |
| The high that prov’d too high, the heroic for earth too hard, | |
| The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, | |
| Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; | |
| Enough that he heard it once: we shall hear it by and by. | 80 |
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| And what is our failure here but a triumph’s evidence | |
| For the fulness of the days? Have we wither’d or agoniz’d? | |
| Why else was the pause prolong’d but that singing might issue thence? | |
| Why rush’d the discords in, but that harmony should be priz’d? | |
| Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, | 85 |
| Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe: | |
| But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear; | |
| The rest may reason and welcome; ’t is we musicians know. | |
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| Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign: | |
| I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce. | 90 |
| Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again, | |
| Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,—yes, | |
| And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground, | |
| Surveying awhile the heights I roll’d from into the deep: | |
| Which, hark, I have dar’d and done, for my resting-place is found, | 95 |
| The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep. | |
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