A strange, autumnal verse;
Where griefs their griefs rehearse;
A flaw of rain within the air;
Black pools; the bough gone bare;
And red dead leaves and broken wall;
The flare of tempest driven behind them all.
Yet ever is his music such,
So rapt of touch,
It mellows all the ache,
And the heartbreak;
We cannot weep, but we stand wistful-eyed,
Like children at the eventide,
In some fast darkening spot,
Who hear their mother call, but see her not.
Oh, truest singer east or west!—
Not for the poor handful of hire,
But for the fury of the song,
The unescapable desire,
He sang his short life out, and it was best;
His wage was hunger; it was long
Betwixt the days of blame and jeers,
And that which set him with his peers;
A fragmentary song, yet dear to Art;
Its numbers hold
Enough of music for new world and old,
To shake them to the heart.
And now, many a summer's weather,
Now, many a winter's storms together,
The wind; the shower;
The blooms; the snows;
Have petaled into this brief hour,
And drop upon his dust a rose.
Roof calls to roof and stone to stone;—
Like white of April blown
The gust along—
The Shape of Song!
