Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/418

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THE FIRE DIVINE

"HOW STRANGE THE MUSICIAN'S MEMORY"

How strange the musician's memory, never wrong
In symphony, sonata, fugue, or song!
Sees he the score with wide, unseeing eyes,
Or is it sound his heart doth memorize?
What is it like? Behold, from out the west,
The long light on the wild wave's flying crest.
See the swift gleam rush up the leaning strand
And die in foam upon the singing sand.


"IN A NIGHT OF MIDSUMMER"

In a night of midsummer, on the still eastern shore of the ocean inlet,
In our hearts a sense of the inaudible pulsings of the unseen, infinite sea,
Suddenly through the clear, cool air, arose the voice of a wonderful tenor; soaring and sobbing in the music of "Otello."
I knew that the singer was long dead; I knew well that it was not his living voice;
And yet truly it was as the voice of a living man; tho' heard as through a veil, still was it human; still was it living; still was it tragic;
Still felt I the fire of the spirit of a man; I was moved by the passion of his art; I perceived the flower and essence of his person; the exquisite expression of his mind and soul;
His soul it was that seized my soul, through his voice, which was as the very voice of sorrow;

And then I thought: If man, by science and searching, can build a cunning instrument that takes over and keeps, beyond the term of human existence, the essence and flower of a man's art;