To Music

When music shook the burnished strings

That bent the singing tree in pain,

I heard the columned harp complain,

Yet praise that ruin whereby it sings,

Saying, For music's sake alone,

To be its instrument, no less,

The bough from its high wilderness

Was early broken and brought down.

Now of strung wire and shaken wood

Name anguish sweet, and loss as gain.

None here so stretched and strung with pain

But would believe you, if he could;

None but at last, believing you,

Must breathe that peace existing nowhere,

The perfume of that fabulous flower

Whereon a stillness lies like dew.

Now like a sleep your heavy spell

Weighs on the senses, till almost

A man might wander and be lost,

Led by that strange and lovely tale:

Wander from reason and go mad,

Dazed with the bright dews of a dream,

Elder Olson

And think naught matters, save to name

The heart as lighter since it bled;

And think all sorrow but a song,

So light a thing it floats in air,

And grief like joy too great to bear,

And both, like music, lost ere long:

And love, most sorrowful of all,

Remembered lighter still, but whether

Like snowflake or light leaf or feather

Upon that bough foredoomed to fall,

Not even music may recall.

SONG

When shall this weight be cast

That droops the spirit's spray?

With birds it will lift at last.

With the leaves it will blow away.

How shall the spirit be

When this thing is done?

As a bough, and the birds flown.

As a leafless tree.

Elder Olson