  The evening steals like an ocean around your playing, Whose perfect tones move on the sombre Deep With a grave gesture, and sigh into a sleep, George, where your hands, along the piano straying, An intricate rhythm keep. And all the room is starry with your dreaming, And limitless and vague. O the white square Of the window-pane shimmers behind you there, Framing the street, where the first lights are gleaming, Transfigured now and fair! Now, while the heaven of night grows vast above her, The soul from her lone dream has sure release; The tumult and the ancient struggles cease— The wars that Beauty wages on her lover Dwindle into a peace, When Schumann speaks so firmly and so sadly, And all the twilight rustles, wave on wave. O, at that smile his wondering spirit gave, What new smile in all things shines back so gladly, Grown dignified and grave! The curtains by the window rise and flutter, The ornaments on the mantel, row on row, Seem touched with a melancholy of long ago— What is it the music dreams, but cannot utter? Schumann—we know, we know. Ah George, what shall be said to you who feel it— All the half-hope and passion unexpressed When twilight heaves more gently in the breast! Ah George, but you, when words would fain reveal it, Smile—and divine the rest. O wrap me in Beethoven’s storm and thunder! My baffled spirit, with abated breath, Flutters upon the verge of life and death— And all my being, whirled along in wonder, Dies between breath and breath. Let me endure, within a single pulsing Of the quick heart, in a storm of showering rain Of sound, all joy, all grief—each breath again Live through a life complete, in one convulsing Moment of rapturous pain! Silence—the lamplight, through the window streaming, Falls on the listless keyboard, smooth and white— Remembered music dreams in the dull light; And you, too, George, sit silently and dreaming, |
|
