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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 8

Musing

page 151

Musing.

Play on, dear love; I do not care
For any music like thine own:
And let it be that simple air
You touch so often when alone:
Not that,—nor that; nor can I tell
Even how its dropping cadence goes;
But last night, when the gloaming fell,
It seemed the voice of its repose.

Just after dinner, you remember,
I went up to my room; and—while
The cold grey twilight of September
Stretched through the limes, like Minster aisle
With lustrous oriel in the west,
And purple clouds in amber laid,
Where sainted spirits seemed to rest
With flaming glories round their head—

Then sat I, well resolved to know,
Caput and locus, every page in't,
One of the fathers, ranked in row,
The grenadiers of my book-regiment.
But, just as if I had uncoiled
His mummy from its rags and rust,
When to his inner heart I toiled,
'Twas but to be choked with saintly dust.

Then, brooding grim, I wondered:—"How
"Far down among the distant ages,
"Hath this fool's babble floated now
"With the high wisdom of the sages?
"He sat, indeed, at early morn
"Beside the fountains of the light;
"But, blanker than a babe new-born,
"He looked on day, and made it night.

"There's Sappho, little but a name,
"And Pindar, but a fragment hoary;
"And Phidias fills a niche in fame
"With formless shadow of his glory.
"Yet this big dullard, leaden-eyed,
"Hath paper, type, and gilding got;
"And drops, the mud-barge, down the tide.
"Where the immortal galleys float.

"Strange doom! high wisdom wrecked arid lost,
"Or just a splinter drifts ashore,
"Through dark and stormy ages tossed,
"To make us grieve there is no more.
"And such as this great fellow, he
"Gets handed down safe to this day,—
"The heir-loom of stupidity,
"To make us grieve another way.

"'Tis well, perhaps; for indolence,
"O'ershadowed by the ancient great,
"Had sunk in hopeless reverence,
"To worship, not to emulate—
"But that among their matchless wise
"They had their matchless fools as well,
"And equal immortalities
"To wit and folly both befell.

"And yet the oaf had curious brains
"For cobwebs in the nooks of thought,—
"A spider-gift for subtle trains
"Of useless reason, soon forgot;
"And many a feeble soul, I know,
"All bloodless in his meshes lies;
"So to the spider let him go—
"God made them both for catching flies."

Thus musing, in a stormful mood
I flung him to his dusty nook,
And left the moth her proper food,
And cobwebs to a kindred book.
Just then it was, dear love, I heard,
Slow-swimming through the air, a rhyme
That soothed me, like a pious word,
Remembered at a needful time.

Small skill have I in harmonies,
Recording, with their measured roll,
The master-spirit's mysteries,
The maze and motion of his soul.
But now and then mine ear will catch,
And keep rehearsing dreamily,
A plaintive thought,—a little snatch
From the Eternal melody.

So with the harmonics of truth,
I may not soar with those that hymn,
In beauty of immortal youth,
Among the clear-eyed seraphim;
I can but stand without the doors,
And sometimes catch a passing strain
Like that the mellow blackbird pours
In twilight-woods, fresh after rain—

page 152

A passing strain of plaintive thought
In natural music softly stealing,
The pathos of a common lot,
Or homely incident, or feeling;
Nor deep, nor broad, nor soaring high,
Nor surging with the passion-strife;
But rippling clear and quietly
Along the common path of life.

And that is all: there was a time
Of windy vanities, when I
Deemed that among the harps sublime
My psalm might blend its melody.
I'm wiser now—I can but sit
In lowly bower of joy or grief,
With thee, dear love, to share in it,
And pipe to give our hearts relief.

It vexed me when this wisdom came,
At first, and, wrestling with my fate,
I strove awhile to fan the flame,
And, spite of nature, to be great.
Yet, what is better than to know
What God has given thee strength to be?
To live a true life here below
Is more than dreaming gloriously.

Then play that plaintive air to me
You touch so often when alone,
That moves in its simplicity,
With natural grace in every tone.
I'm weary of all mocking birds,
I'm weary, too, of straining throats;
And sweetly dropt its natural words
In natural fall of plaintive notes.

Orwell.