Poems (Cromwell)/The Audience
THE AUDIENCE
Intently leans the avid sage We name The Audience. His mood Invites a vigorous prelude Of sound, the silence to assuage,—
The silence in sequestered sources Of his being. (Albeit his mind And soul and heart may be like wind- Awakened rivers in their courses.)
In dear, attenuated line, The violin a theme avers. It is this theme as it recurs That forms the plenary design,—
This theme, which the composer's love Could never deal with twice the same; Submissive cellos now proclaim It; louder clarions above
Now give it wise embellishment. In unsuspected ways, all strings And pipes resume it, altering Their rhythms to be more eloquent.
The strange, concurrent harmonies Provoke The Audience to pleasure, Lead by phrase and clustered measure To the peace of cadences.
The Audience thinks in terms of tone; The curious intellect pursues The flowing lines and shadowy hues Of sound, akin to sculptured stone;
Mind estimates. But in between The mind and soul an interim Is brimmed with intonations dim: The soul itself is left serene.
Who can express what music is To soul? A cloud becomes cascade And stirs a river winter-weighed With frost. The massive images
Of mountains, on whose purple ground The falling water carves a line Of white, as narrow and as fine As winter floods when first unbound,
Remind one of the soul when sound Traverses it. Music is spring To soul, April's awakening, A freedom and a peace profound.
But what is music to the heart?A trouble, a vicissitude, A dream no cadence will conclude. In it the surging sounds of Art
Stay ever unresolved. They are Beginning only, origin, Inchoate symphony within A symphony of sky and star.
There is no answer, thus and thus, That present players can impart To the long-listening, searching heart; But answers multitudinous.
The avid sage, The Audience, Is wrapped in his own silence dim. The mind, the soul, the heart in him Observe the circling consonance
Of chords. These grow more intricate Each time they are resumed, and still One chosen theme the tones fulfill, One motion they delineate.
So God reveals Himself to me. I am His audience; I hear With mind and soul and heart His clear Progressive theme perpetually.