Читать книгу The lost chimes, and other poems - Gustav Melby - Страница 3
ОглавлениеTHE LOST CHIMES
“Count not the cost, a thousand more or less
Is not the question, but a perfect tone,
A clang as clear as the Italian sky,
As strong and joyful as the victor’s cry,
As deep and mellow as the ocean’s moan,
And tender as a mother’s fond caress.”
“And let there be no stint of pure alloy,
Of bronze and silver, no, not even of gold,
Yea, let this be thy very master-piece,
In all its making,—if it doth me please,
Half of my fortune shall to thee be told,
And to its praise my life I shall employ.”
Thus spake Sordino, noble Florentine,
To one who was renowned for casting bells,
Who now was asked to make a set of chimes,
A task he had accomplished many times,
But this, he thought, the highest skill compels,
And yet the work he promised to begin.
But first for thoughts and dreams he leisure found,
For consecration to the work at hand,
Since this the glory of his life should be,
A grand creation, a sweet symphony
Of human life, which all might understand,
Their souls re-echoed in the liquid sound.
II
He was a man of many changing moods,
Impetuous, like mighty Angelo,
And kindly, like the saintly Raphael,
His patience, like Palissy’s, nought could quell,
In worship, like the good Angelico,
And yet the “fickled Fame” his name excludes.
He nature loved, and wandered oft alone
Mid deep recesses of some shady wood,
And listened to the many varied sounds,
From notes of birds to noise of baying hounds,
And oftentimes as if enraptured stood,
Held by the music of the undertone.
Once had he loved a maiden, in whose eyes
He read the happiness of human life,
And mystery of the immortal soul,
A love to which he gave himself and all,
With but one aim, to win her as his wife,
And realize his dream of Paradise.
But death did also mark her for his own,
With hectic flushes on the pallid cheek,
And growing languor in the sprightly limbs;
And as the day before night’s darkness dims,
So did her youthful buoyancy grow weak,
And like a vision fair, she soon was gone.
And sorrow, with its wintry blast did chill
His manly nature to the very core,
And many months he spent in utter woe;
But, like the flow’r which grows beneath the snow,
A life which he had never known before
Rose from submission to the Higher Will.
These elements did pass into his work,
His love and grief, his dreams and changing moods,
And all he was seemed mingle in the mold
Of molten metal, and was subtly told
By silver tonguéd bells in solitudes
Of monastery, or of country kirk.
III
As one who summons all the latent pow’r
Within his soul, for one last great attempt
To reach an aim of lifelong beckoning,
Thus did he give himself to this one thing,
Began his task in spotless white, and kempt,
Emerging from the sacramental hour.
He days and nights upon his labor fixed,
Forgetful both of hunger and of sleep,—
His soul reflected in the fiery glow;
And some did say, he let his life-blood flow,
And others, that he sometimes stopped to weep,
And with his blood and tears the metal mixed.
And when at last the chimes were cast, there came
A great collapse of utter weariness
Upon him, and he slept for many days;
The finishing, with all artistic ways,
Was patience’s work, more like a fond caress
Of something born of inspiration’s flame.
The day of testing came, the final test;
Sordino coming early in the morn,
Since eager was his soul to know for sooth,
If its ideal of the highest truth—
Of harmony—incarnate can be born,
And with the works of man itself invest.
And when two skilful hands intoned a hymn,
And gave the chimes a chance for utterance,—
As shining on a scaffold high they hung,—
It seemed to him, it was by angels sung,
So pure, so sweet, it did his soul entrance,
And with the tears of joy his eyes make dim.
The task was done, a work of perfect art;
And handsome was the price Sordino paid,
A fortune to the maker of those bells,
Of whom, henceforth, tradition nothing tells,
We know not where his future course was laid,
Nor when or where from life he did depart.
IV
The chimes found their exalted place within
A high cathedral tow’r, Sordino’s gift
To a beloved fane of Italy,
And that their melodies might always be
Within his hearing, he his home did shift
From country silence to the city’s din.
Where, like some voices from an unseen realm
Their music did announce each fleeting hour
To all the throngs which moved in streets below,
And as their harmonies upon the air did flow,
They seemed to have a superhuman pow’r
O’er listening hearts, yea, even to overwhelm
The meditative mind with such a joy
Of loveliness and beauty, that a tear
Would glisten in the upward look of pray’r;
And they would lift the heavy loads of care
From souls oppressed, and banish carking fear,
And grief and black remorse which life destroy.
And thus they day and night gripped human souls
With hope and cheer mid life’s divers pursuits;
But on the Sabbath and the sacred days,
When man is called to think of better ways,
They seemed so jubliant with heavenly truths,
That none did doubt that God His children calls.
They had a gladness which at sundry times
Was almost riotous, like children’s play,
And seemed to send out peals of laughter sweet,
When they a merry bridal train did greet,
As to the church it gaily made its way,
Transported with the rapture of the chimes.
But when the dead were carried to their rest,
Its dirges were of all most wonderful,
A depth of sadness—such as none can tell—
A sadness which the gayest did compel
To see a shadow of the ghastly skull,
And yet to feel that even the grave is blest.
V
In all these cadences Sordino found
A true delight, but most in solemn dirge,
For melancholy was his common mood,
Though sometimes he was in an altitude
Of such hilarity, that it did verge
Upon the wildness of a mind unsound.
Indeed, the whisper passed, he was insane,
Since only one with shattered reason could
Half of his fortune spend for such a thing:
To hear a set of golden churchbells ring,
And none of his few friends quite understood
His pleasure in a funeral refrain.
He loved to walk ’mongst tombs and ancient graves,
And read the epitaphs on crumbling stones,
Or muse beside some gloomy cypress tree,
While list’ning to a mournful melody,
Mark how the harmony of all the tones
Did vanish far away o’er sunlit waves.
He was a seeker after harmony,
Such harmony in which all life shall blend,
In perfect peace and concord, this he heard
Expressed in those deep tones which moved and stirred
His brooding mind, and seemed an answer lend
To all its questions of life’s destiny.
Unhappiness had marred his early life;
His marriage to a girl who loved him not,
And yet who lived within his childless home,
For binding was the tie once made by Rome,
Until at last her ways became a blot,
And by her sins she ceased to be his wife.
Since then he lived a recluse more or less,
Except when boon-companions with him met,
To dine, or rather to a revelry,
When wine and music set his spirit free,
When he life’s disappointments could forget,
And when some transient bliss he did caress.
But feasts, of such a nature, yearly grew
Less frequent, for his real self was good,
And governed him, as he in age advanced;
And now the chimes his being so entranced,
That all the hunger of his heart found food
In their sweet intonations, ever new.
They fed his innate philosophic bent,
And made him delve into the subtlest lore
Of Metaphysics and Theology,
That he through these, perchance, might clearer see
The truth which echoed from another shore,
Each time their sovereign voice the silence rent.
And he waxed confident, the human cry
Is wafted somewhere to a higher sphere,
Where it is answered with a perfect peace,—
That not a soul from earth does find release,
Release from darkness and the night of fear,
Without a morn of better hope on high.
VI
The grave has, after all, the truest peace;
The graveyard is the greatest moralist;
And it was wisdom that in days of eld,
The living with the dead communion held,
For they did worship in their very midst,
A custom which in our good times must cease.
No longer can we lay our dead within
The shadow of the church, but far away,
In some secluded spot where seldom seen
Is their last resting-place, beneath the green,
Where some good farmer makes his loads of hay,
And murmurs that it is in places thin.
We do not, in this shallow age, endure
To think of death, such thoughts do not amuse,
But mock the things which we are striving after;
It tickles not our vein of silly laughter,
The subject is unpleasant and obtruse,
Of which the preachers even are not sure.
The graveyard, ne’ertheless, is preaching more
To thinking minds than many homilies,—
It tells in no uncertain language of
The vanity in all which here we love,—
That all our restless seeking after bliss
Is but the drifting to another shore.
That men and empires have their little day,
Then turn to dust, as others have before,
That death is still the monarch of the world,
Before whose feet all things at last are hurled,
Before whose realm there is no closing door,
And has for all but one sad, darksome way.
VII
Of all the seasons of the year there’s none
To melancholy people, like the fall,
That is, to persons of poetic mind,
For in this season they a beauty find
In earth and sky, which is transcending all
The wondrous glory of the summer gone.
For all its mellow beauty has a sadness,
Twixt tears and smiles, a sadness seen and heard
In nature’s varied aspects and its notes,
Upon the air’s dim haziness it floats:
The shrill cry of the migratory bird,
And tunes of vintage-reapers in their gladness.
’Tis in the fatal drooping of the flower,
’Tis in the stubble of the fields and meads,
Where crickets hold a concert day and night,
’Tis in the stormcloud’s shadow and its flight
Across the waters and the sighing reeds,
’Tis in the gold and crimson of the bower.
’Tis in the rain that strikes against the pane
And leaves its diamonds on the bending straw,
’Tis in the mist which follows nightly shower,
A floating mantle of the Morning Hour,
’Tis in the swelling brooks which onward go,
With mystic songs to the majestic main.
And Melancholy is the Truth, said one,
Whose genius pierced through the life of man,
Who hated cant, deriding the Tartuffe,
And saw beneath the robe the devil’s hoof,
A wandering exile from his native land,
The fascinating bard, the great Byron.
Forgive, O, lustrous name, that I should use
Thy music for a lyre so poorly strung!
But I did often in my youth, even now,
Admire the glory of his laurelled brow,
And felt that truth and freedom ne’er was sung,
As by this suff’ring highpriest of the Muse.
O, all ye learned critics of his art,
Who analyze by a mechanic rule,
Ye fail to see the grandeur of his soul,
That soared above the petty and the small,
Indifferent to the existing school,
Preferring Pegasus to any cart.
With the sublime he ever was in tune,
’Mid Alpen heights, or on “the boundless deep,”
Or ’mid the storm and deaf’ning thunders crash,
In darkest night, lit by the lightning’s flash,
Or on the plains where vanished empires sleep,
Time’s desolation ’neath a waning moon.
His harp did catch the minor music’s flow
From nature’s heart and human tragedy,
And when he laughed it was the cynic’s smile,
Though he at heart was tender as a child,
But death to him had sweeter harmony,
Than life’s brief dream with its relentless woe.
Likewise Sordino, after years of thinking,
Found in the dirge the acme of his search,
The home-call to a truer life’s beginning,
When man shall cease from sorrow and from sinning,
The great, the final welcome of the church,
The note of peace which heav’n to earth is linking.
