Rich spectral beasts that feared to stir, And haughty and wistful gazed on her, And swayed their sleepy masks in time And growled a drowsy under-rhyme. Tune done, that agile fancy stopped; And all that warbling ecstasy Was winged with terror, and daintily Upon her. The third tune was caught With trouble from unuttered air: And still as autumn they sat there. The breathless seventh tune died out She stirred, she moaned, she crawled a space. They trod the stained flute where it lay. Joseph Russell Taylor. ON A LUTE FOUND IN A SARCOPHAGUS What curled and scented sun-girls, almondeyed, With lotos-blossoms in their hands and hair, Have made their swarthy lovers call them fair, With these spent strings, when brutes were deified, And Memnon in the sunrise sprang and cried, And love-winds smote Bubastis, and the bare Black breasts of carven Pasht received the prayer Of suppliants bearing gifts from far and wide! This lute has out-sung Egypt; all the lives Of violent passion, and the vast calm art That lasts in granite only, all lie dead; THE MUSICAL DUEL (From "The Lover's Melancholy") Menaphon. Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales Which poets of an elder time have feigned To Thessaly I came; and, living private, ions Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts, By art and nature. Men. I shall soon resolve you. A sound of music touched mine ears, or rather, Indeed, entranced my soul. As I stole nearer, Invited by the melancholy, I saw This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute, With strains of strange variety and harmony, Proclaiming, as it seemed, so bold a challenge To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds, That, as they flocked about him, all stood silent, Wondering at what they heard. I wondered too. Am. And so do I; good! - On! Men. A nightingale, Nature's best-skilled musician, undertakes The challenge, and, for every several strain The well-shaped youth could touch, she sang her own; He could not run division with more art Men. You term them rightly; |