Late Lyrics and Earlier

Haunting Fingers

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"Are you awake,

Comrades, this silent night?

Well 'twere if all of our glossy gluey make

Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!"

"O viol, my friend,

I watch, though Phosphor nears,

And I fain would drowse away to its utter end

This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!"

And they felt past handlers clutch them,

Though none was in the room,

Old players' dead fingers touch them,

Shrunk in the tomb.

"'Cello, good mate,

You speak my mind as yours:

Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state,

Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?"

"Once I could thrill

The populace through and through,

Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will." . . .

(A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.)

And they felt old muscles travel

Over their tense contours,

And with long skill unravel

Cunningest scores.

"The tender pat

Of her aery finger-tips

Upon me daily--I rejoiced thereat!"

(Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)

"My keys' white shine,

Now sallow, met a hand

Even whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth with mine

In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!"

And its clavier was filmed with fingers

Like tapering flames--wan, cold--

Or the nebulous light that lingers

In charnel mould.

"Gayer than most

Was I," reverbed a drum;

"The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs! What a host

I stirred--even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!"

Trilled an aged viol:

"Much tune have I set free

To spur the dance, since my first timid trial

Where I had birth--far hence, in sun-swept Italy!"

And he feels apt touches on him

From those that pressed him then;

Who seem with their glance to con him,

Saying, "Not again!"

"A holy calm,"

Mourned a shawm's voice subdued,

"Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm

Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude."

"I faced the sock

Nightly," twanged a sick lyre,

"Over ranked lights! O charm of life in mock,

O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!"

Thus they, till each past player

Stroked thinner and more thin,

And the morning sky grew grayer

And day crawled in.

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