Poems (Trask)/The Voice

by Clara Augusta Jones Trask

For works with similar titles, see The Voice.

THE VOICE.

There's a mute voice ever singing to me in the depths of air,
I hear its plaintive breathings, soft and lonesome, everywhere,—
By the river, on the mountain, and the moorland ghostly bare.

Chanting, chanting, ever chanting, its solemn melody,
Like a myriad tiny pearl-shells in the deep and unknown sea,
Like a band of little fairies in a bed of rosemary.

When the purple shades of night-time steal down the gold of day,
And the evening flames of amber make the west a shining way,
That lone and mystic melody my spirit hears alway.

'Tis a lute no mortal fingers the golden strings have swept,
The rich voice of an oriole whose tones have always slept,—
A moaning, sighing human voice which has forever wept.

Across the clover meadows where they rake the new-mown hay,
And from the azure bosom of the pulseless crystal bay,
In the dead nights of December, in the passion noons of May.

Full of tender, soft complaining, floating through the amethyst,
Like a ray of summer sunshine on the evening's sombre mist,—
Like an unplayed strain of music waiting in the wind-harp's cyst.

Lowly, gently,—never joyous; one subdued and hallowed strain,
Like the dripping on the scented leaves of fragrant August rain,—
'Tis of her heavenly harp-strings the mystical refrain.

Oh, my soul it leaps and struggles like the ever-trembling stars!
Beats against its clay-walled prison like the sea-waves 'gainst the bars,
Chafes like a gallant soldier prisoned in the sight of wars!

All the world is spirit-haunted, only that we've ears of stone;
Calling! calling! ever calling! I have ears for that alone!
Oh, a phantom voice is calling me from shadeland's vast unknown!