Music in Darkness

I

At the dim end of day
I heard the great musician play:
Saw her white hands now slow, now swiftly pass;
Where gleamed the polished wood, as in a glass,
The shadow hands repeating every motion.
Then did I voyage forth on music's ocean,
Visiting many a sad or joyful shore,
Where storming breakers roar,
Or singing birds made music so intense,—
So intimate of happiness or sorrow, —
I scarce could courage borrow
To hear those strains; well-nigh I hurried thence
To escape the intolerable weight
That on my spirit fell when sobbed the music: late, too late, too late,
While slow withdrew the light
And, on the lyric tide, came in the night.

II

So grew the dark, enshrouding all the room
In a melodious gloom,
Her face growing viewless; line by line
That swaying form did momently decline
And was in darkness lost.
Then white hands ghostly turned, though still they tost
From tone to tone; pauseless and sure as if in perfect light;
With blind, instinctive, most miraculous sight,
On, on they sounded in that world of night.

III

Ah, dearest one! was this thy thought, as mine,
As still the music stayed?
"So shall the loved ones fade,—
Feature by feature, line on lovely line;
For all our love, alas,
From twilight into darkness shall they pass!
We in that dark shall see them never more,
But from our spirits they shall not be banished,—
For on and on shall the sweet music pour
That was the soul of them, the loved, the vanished;
And we, who listen, shall not lose them quite
In that mysterious night."