In the world’s bleak house, like this
Strange lodger of mine. 
His presence is worse to miss
Than sun’s best shine.

I put no thought at all
Upon the end,
If only I may call
Such a man friend.

And a friend he is, heart light
With love for heft,
Proud as silence, whose right
Hand ignores his left.

Yes, odd! he gives his name
As Spiritus. 
But that is vague as a flame
In the wind to us.

And then (but not a breath
Of this!) you see,
All his effects, my faith! 
Are marked D.V.

His cape-coat has a rip,
But for all that,
(Folk smile, suggest a dip
In the dyer’s vat,—­

Those purple aldermen
Who roll about
In coaches, drive till ten,
And die of gout),

I think he finely shows
How learning’s crumbs
At least can rival those
Of—­ ’st, here he comes!

Beyond the Gamut

Softly, softly, Niccolo Amati! 
What can put such fancies in your head? 
There, go dream of your blue-skied Cremona,
While I ponder something you have said.

Something in that last low lovely cadence
Piercing the green dusk alone and far,
Named a new room in the house of knowledge,
Waiting unfrequented, door ajar.

While you dream then, let me unmolested
Pass in childish wonder through that door,—­
Breathless, touch and marvel at the beauties
Soon my wiser elders must explore.

Ah, my Niccolo, it’s no great science
We shall ever conquer, you and I.
Yet, when you are nestled at my shoulder,
Others guess not half that we descry.

As all sight is but a finer hearing,
And all color but a finer sound,
Beauty, but the reach of lyric freedom,
Caught and quivering past all music’s bound;

Life, that faint sigh whispered from oblivion,
Harks and wonders if we may not be
Five small wits to carry one great rhythmus,
The vast theme of God’s new symphony.

As fine sand spread on a disc of silver,
At some chord which bids the motes combine,
Heeding the hidden and reverberant impulse,
Shifts and dances into curve and line,

The round earth, too, haply, like a dust-mote,
Was set whirling her assigned sure way,
Round this little orb of her ecliptic
To some harmony she must obey.

Did the Master try the taut string merely,
Give a touch, and she must throb to time? 
Think you how his bow must rouse the echoes,
Quailing triumphing on, secure, sublime!

Ah, thought cannot far without the symbol! 
Help me, little brother, hold the trend. 
Dear good flesh, that keeps the spirit steady,
Lest it faint, grown dizzy at thought’s end!

Waves of sound (Is this your thought, Amati?),
Climbing into treble thin and clear,
Past the silence, change to waves of color,
We must say, when eye takes place of ear?