  K. R. J. W WHERE is the voice gone which so many years, Each year grown sweeter, rose in glorious song, Interpreting to all our hearts and ears Ecstasy, passion, pain, the yearning strong Of baffled love, the patience stronger yet, The pang of hope, the sweetness of regret? How should that perish which seemed born of heaven And framed to breathe the meaning of the skies? Can music render back such gift once given; Or bear to know some subtlest harmonies Must evermore go half expressed, perceived, Forever thwarted and forever grieved? Heaven did not need her voice; its courts are full Of choristers angelic trained for praise. No note is lacking in the wonderful According chorus, which, untired, always Sings, “Holy, holy, holy!” round the throne; But earth seems dumb to us now it is gone! God does not grudge us anything of good! And I will dare to fancy when she died, And on the sweet lips which so featly wooed Music, the guest, to enter and abide, Death laid his hand, and with insistence strong Shut in the secret of their power of song,— That the dear voice, thus sadly dispossessed And reft of home, sped forth upon its road, And like a lost and lonely child, in quest Of shelter, sought another warm abode In human shape,—some gentle, new-born thing, Where it might fold its torn and beaten wing. And if, long years from now, we catch a strain Which has the old, familiar, rapturous thrill, We shall smile, saying, “There it is again! It is not dead, it wakes in music still. Hark! how the lovely accents soar and float, A skylark singing from a woman’s throat!” |
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