Poems (Van Rensselaer)/The Player and his Violin
THE PLAYER AND HIS VIOLIN
My little brother, small brown violin,How was the soul of singing caged withinA body of this strange yet gracile mould?How was the shape so wondrously surmised,As with a wizardry of art devised, To capture and to hold A spirit of such wild and free Divinity?
Not laws to parse and tabulate are theyThat dictate thus the unalterable wayTo safeguard, in a hidden silentness,The perfect voice of purest melody—To keep it pent yet waiting eagerly For the first summoning stress Of the right touch, that it may sing Its answering.
Unsolved, we know them only as we know,When through the organ-pipes of thunder blowDeep blasts of the great cosmic symphony,Or hollow conchs of wave and whistles of sleetAnd harps of seashore pines cry out to meet The north-wind's reveille— As then we know some law enorme Shapes the loud storm.
Even as its crashing musics are unfurledFrom caverns of the cloudy upper world,So from the bosom of this tremulous woodStreams the bright vehemence of melodic speech,By the same rules awaked, controlled, that teach The shining brotherhood Of star and sun and satellite To choir aright.
How should we, earth's ephemera, understand?Yet, matching only mortal ear and handAgainst the archeternal secrecies,From nothingness, unholpen and untaughtBy pattern-books of God, we, we, have wrought, Meeting his laws' decrees, The body of the violin, The soul within.
What matters the impenetrable Why?—Thou waitest, singing shape, and thou and ISuch strains may breathe as scarcely sound in heaven,Unless upon its floor of stars there stand,Thy incorporeal semblance in his hand, Some player that had given A voice like thine its rapturous birth First here on earth.
Come, little brother! Laid to cheek and chin,Give me thy heart-beats, palpitant violin!Never a lover held his true-love's browMore lovingly; never he knew so wellWhat a sweet throat may find it meet to tell In song as I know now, Or had such certainty to hear Joy for his ear.
Thy lover yet thy master, when my handOf throbbing form and spirit takes command,Then only flames aloud the slumbering fire.Thy master yet thy lover, I must knowThine every need and wish ere I can show Thou art the heart's-desire Of music's self when it would be Pure poesy.
So doth my touch thy dreaming ardors moveTo utterance of the very soul of love;So the sharp sweetness of the thrillèd stringStirs in my heart the vision of a faceThat lives within its passionate embrace Alone; and we take wing For paradise together, three— Thou, I, and she.