Like a cloud-shadow crossing the plain;

The sun follows often, the wind at his side,

Then a whisper that never the roses denied,

And a sound like a light fall of rain.

Grander music she plays—music weird and sublime,

Thunder toned, like the sound of the sea,

That rolleth away like the surges of time;

But, to quicken my thoughts and to sweeten my rhyme,

She always played soft airs for me.

Faint whispers that blend with the deep forest’s sound,

From which a wild fawn would not flee,

And sweet as the brook that the summer has found,

When singing its song soft and glad underground,

And carrying its heart to the sea....

A movement then mingles like those that are heard

When the trees toss their shade to the eaves;

A pause and a tremble, as of a sweet word,

Or the dream-haunted wing of a night-hidden bird

That is shaking the dew from the leaves.

Then silence, that even a word would profane—

Silence, holding some thoughts heaven-born,

That only her fingers a moment can chain;

Up, up to the skies they have wandered again,

Like a prayer holy spoken at morn.

Those soft airs she played in the dim lighted room,

With her heart in the past far away—

Ah, what would I give if to-night, through the gloom,

Along with the budding and bursting of bloom,

They now past my window would stray.

Alas! vain the thought, and as vain sounds the sigh,

Long distance my wish has delayed;

But we sit in the twilight—my mem’ry and I—

And listen and linger, we scarcely know why,

Unless for those soft airs she played.