And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed 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 naught: 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: And there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head! Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared; 56 Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow; For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared, That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go. 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 saved because I cling with my mind To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be. 64 Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffa ble Name? 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 naught, is silence implying sound; 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. 72 All we have willed or hoped or dreamed 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 When eternity affirms the conception of an hour, The high that proved 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. And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence 80 For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized? Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence? Why rushed the discords in, but that harmony should be prized? Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear, Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of 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. Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign: I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce. Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again, 88 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 rolled from into the deep; Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found. The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep. 96 1864. Robert Browning. SIR GALAHAD My good blade carves the casques of men, The shattering trumpet shrilleth high, They reel, they roll in clanging lists, How sweet are looks that ladies bend On whom their favours fall! For them I battle till the end, To save from shame and thrall; But all my heart is drawn above, My knees are bow'd in crypt and shrine: I never felt the kiss of love, Nor maiden's hand in mine. More bounteous aspects on me beam, Me mightier transports move and thrill; 12 24 When down the stormy crescent goes, Then by some secret shrine I ride; I hear a voice but none are there; Fair gleams the snowy altar-cloth, Sometimes on lonely mountain-meres I leap on board: no helmsman steers: A gentle sound, an awful light! Three angels bear the Holy Grail:- As down dark tides the glory slides, When on my goodly charger borne Thro' dreaming towns I go, The cock crows ere the Christmas morn, The tempest crackles on the leads, And, ringing, springs from brand and mail; 36 48 |