Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward: Verses about Music

AUGUST 29, 1879.

I had no song so wise and sweet,
As birthday songs, dear friend, should be.
Silent, among a hundred guests,
I only prayed for thee.


Such wishes held the speaking lip,
Such mood of blessing took me, there,
That music, like a bird to heaven,
Flew, and was lost in prayer.

Oh, when I would have loved you, Dear,
The sun of winter hung more near;
Yet not so sweet, so sweet, so sweet,
The wild-rose reddening at my feet.


Your lips had learned a golden word,
You sang a song that all men heard,
Oh, love is fleet, the strain is long.
Who stays the singer from her song?


Across my path the red leaves whirled.
Dared I to kneel with all the world?
How came I, then, to clasp you, Sweet,
And find a woman at my feet?

Coldly the night-wind shivers on the hill-top,
Cold crawls the pale-faced fog from off the sea;
Tossed by the one, and blinded by the other,
Turn I my late steps longing unto thee!


Warm as thy glad hand, held in silence towards me,
Shines out thy window's light across the lea;
Warm as a flower waiting for the south-wind,
So waits thy sweet face sheltered there for me.


Wild as the gale, and like the mist pervading
The soul of the dark night, and the soul of me,
Hoping or hopeless, for living or for dying,
Turn I my late love forever unto thee!

Flushed with fancies, I bethought me,
'Into music I will set them,
Like a pearl into its setting
Of the finest golden fretting;
Never shall the world forget them;
It shall sing me, ring me back the melody;
It shall rise and bless the poem while it blesseth me.'


But, ah me! some faintness ailed me,
Or it ailed the music rather.
Was it all a stir of gladness?
Was it half a pang of sadness?
Do my best, I could not gather
From my heart's store any chord of harmony;
No other thought was music to me but the thought of thee.


Proud as joy my failure makes me!
Proud I sit and sing about it;
Not in finest poet-fashion,
Not for deepest poet's passion,
Would my soul have gone without it,
While the old earth asketh song or psalmody,
Heart, remember! love shall still the truest music be!

'We're all for love,' the violins said.

-Sidney Lanier

Do I love you? Do I love you?
Ask the heavens that bend above you
To find language and to prove you
If they love the living sun.
Ask the burning, blinded meadows
If they love the falling shadows,
If they hold the happy shadows
When the fervid day is done.


Ask the blue-bells and the daisies,
Lost amid the hot field-mazes,
Lifting up their thirsty faces,
If they love the summer rains.
Ask the linnets and the plovers,
In the nest-life made for lovers,
Ask the bees and ask the clovers-
Will they tell you for your pains?


Do I, Darling, do I love you?
What, I pray, can that behoove you?
How in Love's name can I move you?
When for Love's sake I am dumb!
If I told you, if I told you,
Would that keep you, would that hold you,
Here at last where I enfold you?
If it would-Hush! Darling, come!

I

As sentient as a wedding-bell,
The vibrant air throbs calling her
Whose eager body, earwise curved,
Leans listening at the heart of hell.
She is one nerve of hearing, strained
To love and suffer, hope and fear-
Thus, hearkening for her Love, she waits,
Whom no man's daring heart has gained.


II

Oh, to be sound to such an ear!
Song, carol, vesper, comfort near,
Sweet words, at sweetest, whispered low,
Or dearer silence, happiest so.
By little languages of love
Her finer audience to prove;
A tenderness untried, to fit
To soul and sense so exquisite;
The blessed Orpheus to be
At last, to such Eurydice!


III

I listened in hell! I listened in hell!
Down in the dark I heard your soul
Singing mine out to the holy sun.
Deep in the dark I heard your feet
Ringing the way of Love in hell.
Into the flame you strode and stood.
Out of the flame you bore me well,
As I listened in hell.


IV

I listen in hell! I listen in hell!
Who trod the fire? Where was the scorch?
Clutched, clasped, and saved, what a tale was to tell
-Heaven come down to hell!
Oh, like a spirit you strove for my sake!
Oh, like a man you looked back for your own!
Back, though you loved me heavenly well,
Back, though you lost me. The gods did decree,
And I listen in hell.

Master! let stronger lips than these
Turn melody to harmony,
Poet! mine tremble as they crave
A word alone with thee.


Thy songs melt on the vibrant air,
The wild birds know them, and the wind;
The common light hath claim on them,
The common heart and mind.


And air, and light, and wind, shall be
Thy fellow-singers, while they say
How seventy years of music stir
The common pulse to-day.


Hush, sweetest songs! Mine ears are deaf
To all of ye save only one.
Blind are the eyes that turn the leaf
Against the Autumn sun.


Oh, blinder once were fading eyes,
Close folded now from shine and rain,
And duller were the dying ears
That heard the chosen strain.


Stay, solemn chant! 'T is mine to sing
Your notes alone below the breath.
'T is mine to bless the poet who
Can bless the hour of death.


For once a spirit 'sighed for home,'
A 'longed-for light whereby to see,'
And 'wearied,' found the way to them,
O Christian seer, through thee!


Passed-with thy words on paling lips,
Passed-with thy courage to depart;
Passed-with thy trust within the soul,
Thy music in the heart.


Oh, calm above our restlessness,
And rich beyond our dreaming, yet
In heaven, I know, one owes to thee
A glad and grateful debt.


From it may learn some tenderer art,
May find and take some better way
Than all our tenderest and best,
To crown thy life to-day.

Of Guinevere from Arthur separate,
And separate from Launcelot and the world,
And shielded in the convent with her sin,
As one draws fast a veil upon a face
That 's marred, but only holds the scar more close
Against the burning brain-I read to-day
This legend; and if other yet than I
Have read, or said, how know I? for the text
Was written in the story we have learned,
Between the ashen lines, invisible,
In hieroglyphs that blazed and leaped like light
Unto the eyes. A thousand times we read;
A thousand turn the page and understand,
And think we know the record of a life,
When lo! if we will open once again
The awful volume, hid, mysterious,
Intent, there lies the unseen alphabet-
Re-reads the tale from breath to death, and spells
A living language that we never knew.


This that I read was one short song of hers,
A fragment, I interpret, or a lost
Faint prelude to another-missing too.
She sang it (says the text) one summer night,
After the vespers, when the Abbess passed
And blessed her; when the nuns were gone, and when
She, kneeling in her drowsy cell, had said
Her prayers (poor soul!), her sorrowful prayers, in which
She had besought the Lord, for His dear sake,
And love and pity of His Only Son,
To wash her of her stain, and make her fit
On summer nights, behind the convent bars
And on stone-floors, with bruisèd lips, to pray
Away all vision but repentance from
Her soul.


When, kneeling as she was, her limbs
Refused to bear her, and she fell afaint
From weariness and striving to become
A holy woman, all her splendid length
Upon the ground, and groveled there, aghast
That buried nature was not dead in her,
But lived, a rebel through her fair, fierce youth;
Aghast to find that claspèd hands would clench;
Aghast to feel that praying lips refused
Like saints to murmur on, but shrank
And quivered dumb. 'Alas! I cannot pray!'
Cried Guinevere. 'I cannot pray! I will
Not lie! God is an honest God, and I
Will be an honest sinner to his face.
Will it be wicked if I sing? Oh! let
Me sing a little, of I know not what;
Let me just sing, I know not why. For lips
Grow stiff with praying all the night.
Let me believe that I am happy, too.
A blessèd blessèd woman, who is fit
To sing because she did not sin; or else
That God forgot it for a little while
And does not mind me very much.
Dear Lord,'
(Said Guinevere), 'wilt thou not listen while
I sing, as well as while I pray? I shall
Feel safer so. For I have naught to say
God should not hear. The song comes as the prayer
Doth come. Thou listenest. I sing.'…


Purple the night, and high were the skies, and higher
The eyes that leaned like the stars of my soul, to me.
Whom loveth the Queen? Him who hath right to crown her.
Who but the King is he?


Sultry the day, and gold was the hair, and golden
The mist that blinded my soul away from me.
Dethroned for a dream, for a gleam, for a glance, for a color,
How could the crownèd be?


Life goeth by like a deed, nor returneth forever.
Death cometh on, fleet-footed as pity should be.
Hush! When she waketh at last and looketh about her,
Whom will a woman see?


Thus in her cell,
Deep in the summer night, sang Guinevere-
A little, broken, blind, sweet melody-
And then she kneeled upon the convent floor,
And, peaceful, finished all her prayer and slept;
For she had naught to say God might not hear.

Upon the city called the Friends'
The light of waking spring
Fell vivid as the shadow thrown
Far from the gleaming wing
Of a great golden bird, that fled
Before us loitering.


In hours before the spring, how light
The pulse of heaviest feet!
And quick the slowest hopes to stir
To measures fine and fleet.
And warm will grow the bitterest heart
To shelter fancies sweet.


Securely looks the city down
On her own fret and toil;
She hides a heart of perfect peace
Behind her veins' turmoil-
A breathing-space removed apart
From out their stir and soil.


Our reverent feet that golden day
Stood in a quiet place,
That held repressed-I know not what
Of such a poignant grace
As falls, if dumb with life untold,
Upon a human face.


To fashion silence into words
The softest, teach me how!
I know the place is Silence caught
A-dreaming, then and now.
I only know 't was blue above,
And it was green below.


And where the deepening sunshine found
And held a holy mood,
Lowly and old, of outline quaint,
In mingled brick and wood,
Clasped in the arms of ivy vines
A nestling cottage stood:


A thing so hidden and so fair,
So pure that it would seem
Hewn out of nothing earthlier
Than a young poet's dream,
Of nothing sadder than the lights
That through the ivies gleam.


'Tell me,' I said, while shrill the birds
Sang through the garden space,
To her who guided me-'tell me
The story of the place.'
She lifted, in her Quaker cap,
A peaceful, puzzled face,


Surveyed me with an aged, calm,
And unpoetic eye;
And peacefully, but puzzled half,
Half tolerant, made reply:
'The people come to see that house-
Indeed, I know not why,


'Except thee know the poem there-
'T was written long since, yet
His name who wrote it, now-in fact-
I cannot seem to get-
His name who wrote that poetry
I always do forget.


'Hers was Evangeline; and here
In sound of Christ Church bells
She found her lover in this house,
Or so I 've heard folks tell.
But most I know is, that 's her name,
And his was Gabriel.


'I 've heard she found him dying, in
The room behind that door,
(One of the Friends' old almshouses,
Perhaps thee 've heard before
Perhaps thee 've heard about her all
That I can tell, and more.


'Thee can believe she found him here,
If thee do so incline.
Folks have their fashions in belief-
That may be one of thine.
I'm sure his name was Gabriel,
And hers Evangeline.'


She turned her to her common work
And unpoetic ways,
Nor knew the rare, sweet note she struck
Resounding to your praise,
O Poet of our common nights,
And of our care-worn days!


Translator of our golden mood,
And of our leaden hour!
Immortal thus shall poet gauge
The horizon of his power.
Wear in your crown of laurel leaves,
The little ivy flower!


And happy be the singer called
To such a lofty lot!
And ever blessed be the heart
Hid in the simple spot
Where Evangeline was loved and wept,
And Longfellow forgot.


O striving soul! strive quietly,
Whate'er thou art or dost,
Sweetest the strain, when in the song
The singer has been lost;
Truest the work, when 't is the deed,
Not doer, counts for most!


The shadow of the golden wing
Grew deep where'er it fell.
The heart it brooded over will
Remember long and well
Full many a subtle thing, too sweet
Or else too sad to tell.


Forever fall the light of spring
Fair as that day it fell,
Where Evangeline, led by your voice,
O solemn Christ Church bell!
For lovers of all springs, all climes,
At last found Gabriel.