The Poet Sings

Cesar Franck, Symphony in D Minor

I

God, I have seen Thee in my heart.

Thou hast spoken. I have been grass

Nestling caressfully about Thy commanding feet.

Thy majesty is tremulous: a dawn

Sensed as a pale periphery of night,

And manifest as Light.

God, I have seen Thee in my heart-

Felt and perceived Thee, though I could not understand

My dreams of Thy ineffable cool beauty.

Something about the vision was divine-

But it was Thine.

For I am born of Earth, and Earth

Tingles within me like an anxious fire.

I might aspire

To know and understand Thee as Thou art,

But the desire that gave me birth

Chains me to Earth.

God, I have seen Thee in my heart.

I flee from Thee, and hide myself in shame

Under the pall of night. . . .

But Thou art Light:

Star-bursts and bursts of sun in flaring golds,

Swift reds,

Sharp yellows

Blinding my soul,

Out of whose shame melodic ecstasy ascends

Far beyond Mind and Earth and Time and Love

Into Thy sun-swept calm... .

. . . Thy sun-burst blends

All finities into an infinite harmony

Defining, encompassing, resolving, and transcending all.

God, I have seen Thee in my heart.

I am the fragile violet that bends

Penitent before Thy chastening night-wind. . . .

I prism Thy radiance in the morning dew,

Drink it, and live anew.

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Columns were raised to Thee on myrtled shores:

Under the ilex dryads worshipped Thee in dance;

Winds wove the sea-spray into sarabands,

And through sun-gleaming marble corridors

Chanted in muffled moan

And undertone.

A shepherd, improvising on a reed,

Wept the long silences of northern mountains

And dreamed of fountains .. .

Awoke to see

Dryads and spray gracefully undulate

Against a great slow indigo of sea.

He paused to meditate . . .

. .. perhaps on Thee. . .

Perhaps upon the shining spread of sea

Pierced by the dark insistence of a tree.

Perhaps his meditation lingered where

Dryads enticed him with their arms and hair,

Slowing their dance with darker modulations

To supplicate Thee in the evening air.

He had mused long . . . mountains seemed cold and far

Where fountains leaped to greet the evening star.

On northern rocks his gods had been severe-

Barren as wind and snow . . . but here

Even the endless sea was warm, and a slow breeze

Quivered among the fringes of the trees.

So fingers, idly going through a harp,

Might improvise light flowing melodies.

So other fingers, gently met at evening,

Mutely evoke unsounded ecstasies.

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Gods hurried down the rainbow from Walhalla:

They had become mundane.

Man begged the peace of the hushed baptismal sunrise:

They gave him pain.

Man shattered them with a blast of the Siegfried trumpet:

Triumphantly

Man has built up again . ..

Built Thee a temple where the winds make music

Dark with the cool intenseness of the sea.

In it my heart shall sing and be exalted

In praising Thee.

Mine is a song forgotten by its echo;

But in far avenues of infinity

It will be one with Thee,

And will be glorified and go resounding

Down the sun-waters of eternity.

For I have seen Thee in my heart. Thou hast transfigured

The shepherd's dirge into a prayer of dance

Warm with a stately unreluctant beat:

It is a dance to which Thou art the music

Played by the urge of earth that moves our feet . . .

Played by the surge of the sea and the silent mountain,

Dryads and snow and the wood and the star-struck foun-

tain,

Played in a swell of exuberant rhapsody

By the great cosmic harmony of Thy Creation

Flowering unto Thee

Even as I flower unto Thee, resplendent God,

By giving all my being unto the life

Thou hast implanted

Tremendously in me.

God, I have seen Thee in my heart.

Thou hast spoken. I shall arise

And conquer darkness with caressing eyes.

I shall unbend cold silences with song.

Thy Light shall sparkle in the crystal snow.

Shame shall be purged baptismally in dawn.

For love of Thee, majestic trees shall grow

Upward to drink Thy sun;

And rocks shall catch the triumph of my anthem,

Swell it, and loose blue echoes, one by one. . . .

And grandly, through the quietude of sleep,

My soul shall glorify and hymn Thy Light-

For deep,

Where I have seen Thee in my heart,

Dancing incessant fountains tear the night,

And bravely leap

Out of the lethargy of worlds asleep

Into Thy Light!

Light!

Light!