MUSIC: AN ODE
85
Slave of nature and serf of time, the bondman of life
and death,
Dumb with passionless patience that breathed but
forlorn and reluctant breath,
Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer, and
communed aloud with the sea.
III.
silent noon
Kept for him not silence: and soft from the mounting
moon
Fell the sound of her splendour, heard as dawn's in the
breathless night,
Not of men but of birds whose note bade man's soul
quicken and leap to light:
And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness
of earth were as chords in tune.
