He Heard her Sing.
43
And then I went on down the dale in the light of the afterglow,
In that strange light green and pale and serene and pathetic and slow
In its fading round to the north, while the light of the unseen moon
From the east comes brightening forth an ever-increasing boon.
And there in the cottage my Alice, through the hours so short and so long,
Kept filled to the brim love's chalice with the wine of music and song:
And first with colossal Beethoven, the gentlest spirit sublime
Of the harmonies interwoven, Eternity woven with Time;
Of the melodies slowly and slowly dissolving away through the soul,
While it dissolves with them wholly and our being is lost in the Whole;
As gentle as Dante the Poet, for only the lulls of the stress
Of the mightiest spirits can know it, this ineffable gentleness:
And then with the delicate tender phantastic dreamer of night,
Whose splendour is starlike splendour and his light a mystic moonlight,
In that strange light green and pale and serene and pathetic and slow
In its fading round to the north, while the light of the unseen moon
From the east comes brightening forth an ever-increasing boon.
And there in the cottage my Alice, through the hours so short and so long,
Kept filled to the brim love's chalice with the wine of music and song:
And first with colossal Beethoven, the gentlest spirit sublime
Of the harmonies interwoven, Eternity woven with Time;
Of the melodies slowly and slowly dissolving away through the soul,
While it dissolves with them wholly and our being is lost in the Whole;
As gentle as Dante the Poet, for only the lulls of the stress
Of the mightiest spirits can know it, this ineffable gentleness:
And then with the delicate tender phantastic dreamer of night,
Whose splendour is starlike splendour and his light a mystic moonlight,
