HE summer's day lies sickening in the west
Upon a citrine couch of melting blooms;
No breath of air, or fringe of cloud upheaves
One long-line ripple on the ether calm.
The heat is sobering, mellowing; and the cool
Comes filtering o'er the eastern mountains, from
The balmy breathings of the dawning eve.
The tingling mists, dissolving, mingling, deepening
Rise up-like blushes on a maiden's face,
Upturned amid the moonlight, glowing with
Her lover's parting kiss: whose form she sees,
With something of a sadness, fading in
The dusk-amid the vales, to bid the sun,
Earth's lover-face, good-night.
Of eddying voices, and the rumbling roll
Of toil and traffic from the city world
Float up, and clamour lazily amid
The thickening air.
Of slumberous fire, and broad and brooding brow,
And floating webs of brown and glossy curls,
Strolls 'neath dim cypress-shaded avenues,
And twines among grey monuments and tombs,
And enters through a grand cathedral door;
And pauses reverently, and gazes long,
Awe-wrapt, upon the vast, magnific pile;
Around the cavernous nave, adown the long
Dim-lustred chancel, where a mystic flush
Of variegated light pervades, cast through
The Saviour, saint, and scene-limned glass, that fills
The web-arched, scalloped, many-mullioned windows,
And wanders with a step subdued adown
The grey-'lumed aisles, beneath huge canopies,
Agape to catch and toss from nook to nook
The faintest sound; climbs lightly to the grand
High-vaulted choir, and sinks from sight beyond
A crimson curtain, crown and cross emblazed.
Anon, a sound-a breath-a sob-a strain-
Soft as the dawn-sigh on the coppice leaves
Breaks forth and trembles like a distant moan,
And swells into a gush of tremulous jets
Like to the sear-wind 'mongst the autumn days,
And bursts at length in one harmonic roll
Like to the storm-wind wrestling with the waves-
A throbbing tide that fills the echoing choir,
And sweeps its bounds, and leaps in billows huge
Along the dusky cavities and domes,
Till all the hungry space is thrilled and gorged With one weird, frantic torrent-tide of sound.
Outside, a wan, decrepit, blind, bowed man
Sits shaking on an almost sunken mound,
Deep in the shadow of a flaunting tomb.
All suddenly a wee wind-mercury
Wafts to his ears a rumour of the sound;
He lifts his thin white head and hearkens, still,
Then gathers up his form and totters forth,
And with his iron-shod staff creeps feeling up
The gravelled path, beneath the vestibule,
And thence into the huge-ribbed tenement,
Where throbs the music like a mighty soul
Apant for immortality, and drops
Upon an oaken bench that skirts the wall,
Shrinks softly farther, farther, from the draught,
Slopes dreamily his staff, and piles his hands
Atop, and droops his furrowed cheek thereon,
And listens, listens.
And now the prelude ends; And from the massy pipes the master-hand
Draws forth the occult power and wonderment,
The madness and the mystery of music;
At first, a soft, sweet quivering of weak
And infant tones, and then a turbulent gush
Like glorious youth wind-beating on the hills;
Anon, a strong calm roll of dauntless might
Like manhood majesty; a throb of pain,
Of desolation, hunger, grief, despair,
A home-sick murmuring of weariness,
A brief temptation, struggle, feverish,
A holy swell of firm, heroic will,
A passionate burst of lofty eloquence,
A grieved complaint, a yearning humanness,
A pleading moan, a wailing trouble-prayer,
A storm of passion wrestling terrible,
A cry of agony, intense and wild,
A gasp of pitifulness, a sob of death,
A trumpet-crash of triumph-ecstasy!
The master-soul has burst the manacles
Of its long incarnation, and has leaped
With falcon-wing to its own element,
And revels there exultant; even as
A bird escaped anew the fancier's toils;
Thought, memory, are carried off and lost
In the storm-harmony; while on and on
The tempest sweeps, till all the depths and heights
And torrent-rolls of fever-life have found
Incessantly the rush,
The panting, fluctuating cataract
Sweeps through the thrilling minster, vault, and dome;
And twists and doubles 'neath the gothic spans,
And twirls and eddies round and round, and up
The many-pillared piers and pedestals,
And tall and massy columns; chuckling wild
In echoing crypt and niche, recess and nook ;
And leaps and dances through the clamouring space:
Into the dusky transepts, everywhere;
Rushes and meets, and clashing, twirls along;
And wriggles up the zigzag architraves,
The fluted buttresses, and pilasters;
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