The Man with the Lyre

No man knows whence, from very far,
Came a man who bore a lyre,
And his eyes were as bright as a madman's are,
And he sang a song of fire
To the short strings of his lyre,
The love of women, and vain, languishing desire,
Upon his lyre.

His lyre was frail, and flowered with roses pale;
And so sweet rose the voice of his breath,
That as far as a man's eye wandereth,
From the mountain to the vale,
From the valley to the forest, from the forest to the plain,
Ran the young men, and the lasses sprang
To hear the dulcet strain of pain he sang.

"He's a proud man," said all the men.
"Like a soul speaking is this voice of his,
So sad and tender, fit to make you swoon,
His voice is like a woman's kiss!"--
"Ho!" they said--said all the lasses then--
"He is a lover, with his lyre!
Sweetly he speaks, so sweetly with his lyre,
We fain would weep, and would be dying soon...."

But now the singer's voice has changed, he sings
Upon the long chords of his lyre
The deeds of men, and dukes, and kings,
Warring afar from Ophir to Cathay,
And over all the earth in great array,
And weapons shocked by which the soul is rocked,--
And golden oriflammes spread to the breeze's breath
To celebrate the joy of life in death.

"O!" the men, "Alas!" the lasses said,
"We understand no longer what you say.
Your voice that soared, like any wing
Freed but now from the great paradise,
Has gone,--perhaps more proudly hovering,--
We know not in what country now it flies."
"O!" the men, "Alas!" the lasses said.
And children, string by string,
Cried under dazzled skies.

Now for his grave man's voice the singer tries
The greatest chord of all the lyre.
And to the gravest chord of all he saith
Hope that for very youth soars in a breath,
And stretching like a wakened beast desire....
And lo! already, by the willows of the river,
Beautiful Joy who passes binding crowns turns her aside.

And suddenly tempestuous grief rings far and wide,
Its strength awakening from the mystery of the chords
Dream-voices that deliver....
And lo! our fists are clenched and leaping towards
Death's iron gates, and bruised recoiling thence.

"Holla!" the men said; and the lasses laughed.
"Holla!" the men said, "surely he is daft!
He sings, he comes we know not whence;
What would he have from us? We have no pence."
(And the lasses laughed.)
"Follow," the lasses said, "the werwolf we have
started."
And men and maids stoned him with pebbles of the way,
And, twining arms and waists, so glad and gay,
Singing and laughing, all departed,
Laughing and singing, laughing all the way.

But now the solitude is moulding
A long music folding and unfolding.

Is it an unseen angel's touch? As in the grey
Silence might a phantom shape's,
That comes, unrolls its raiment, and escapes,
A voice flees, when the breeze has touched and passed,
And glides within the singing chords....
As a light wind sings at a vessel's mast,
The sweet breath mounting from the river towards
The singer, binds a chant on the lyre's chords.

It is a wing wrinkling the wave, and in it glassed:
It is the vague word moving Nature through and through,
And which the human lip shall never speak....

And now it bears a soul into the blue;
And of a sudden all the melody
Rings out with such a grave accord towards
The skies, that in the radiant deeps of space the chords,
Magnified, no man can fathom how,
Have brushed God's viewless brow!