Poems (Cromwell)/The Audience

by Gladys Cromwell

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.