Pictures in Rhyme/The Song
THE SONG
A marvellous voice rang, clear and sweet, through the changes of a song,
Rising and falling—to rise at the last in a tone of triumph strong:
It spoke of life, it spoke of death, of love, and of love's home,
And the soul of the singer thrill'd the crowd, and soar'd through the gilded dome.
Now the voice is dumb, and its echoes lost on the waves of infinite space,
While long, lithe grasses shake in the wind o'er the singer's sleeping-place.
The art of the singer is dead and done,
And the singer herself has gone;
The gilded dome has sunk in decay,
And none of that crowd survives to-day—
The song lives on alone.
And he who wrote that wondrous song—
Did it bring him wealth and fame?
He breathed but in his song to us,
For no one knows his name.