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Poems (Dudley)/After the Concert

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4657462Poems — After the ConcertMarion Vienna Churchill Dudley


AFTER THE CONCERT.
THE music still throbbed in the arches,
And thrilled in the hearts of the throng;
Like echoes from old battle marches
Or dreams in the drift of a song;

The night was as dark as a sorrow
That knows never respite or cheer;
The rain bode a sunless to-morrow
And everything outward was drear:

Still music within us kept sobbing,
A quivering pleasure and pain;
The notes of the orchestra throbbing
In time with the wavering rain.

A light in the door downward flashing,
Through darkness and rain-drops and mist,
Lent glory to gloom, and the clashing
Great throng was too gay to resist

Its charm; all the faces grew sweeter
And fairer; and richer the tones
Of voices; and brighter, completer
The glances that nobody owns.

Aladdin's good lamp in the story
Wrought never a wonder so rare,
For rain-drops transfigured with glory,
Hung poised in the shimmering air,

Like notes of the music that trembles
On bars that the angels prolong,
When rapture with mortals assembles,
And hearts beat the time of the song.

Brave light in a vanishing portal;
Gay throng on the rim of a dream;
Your beauty is music immortal
That sings through my sadness unseen.

June 19th, 1885.