Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE VIOLIN'S ENCHANTRESS, by WILLIAM ROSE BENET Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: A ripple of light applause. We see her stand Last Line: Knows how those living echoes linger on! Subject(s): Violins | ||||||||
A ripple of light applause. We see her stand Smiling. And now one slim expressive hand Raises the lithe, long bow That swiftly dips and swirls. The clear allegro purls Welling and welling from awakened strings, -- Welling and spreading to an overflow Of first sweet jubilance. The lustrous pine, Cherished against the softness of her cheek Thrills 'twixt her breast and arm And gaily, purely sings, -- Brilliantly seems to speak In syllables divine, -- More animate as her fervor grows more warm. And ere she holds us bound, Just a delicious, graceful girl she seems; Now, as the prelude pauses, Just a slim, eager sprite in silver gauzes; Then those not blind to see And understand her dreams May note the exquisite maternity Of gentle throat and breast and downcast eyes, -- The fostering, brooding tenderness enwound With this strange changeling child, her violin, -- And hear an infant's small and plaintive cries Quaver and sob within Those first bright waves of sound. Faintly our hearts reply. Not yet the stress Of deep emotion bids them throb and burn. Mere melody's enchantments are to learn, -- Subtle gradations, wonder-fraught finesse, Tone-colors, cadences, -- not yet that change To tone magnificence and deeper storms Of sound, whence notes like vivid lightnings leap, Transmuting thoughts fit for the organ's sweep Of spacious fugal forms To these taut strings, since Bach enlarged their range. Not yet the depth and height; the passionate psalms Dreamed nightly by the valiant brain of Brahms. Yet what expression, -- what a sorcery Of rhythmic intonations, Pyrotechnic pizzicatos, modulations, Exhaustless fluency Weaving and interweaving! Oh, darkly yet, but darkly understood Is this miraculous instrument's conceiving! O'er the elastic and tenacious wood Did not the Mantuan brood, -- Deft Piedmontese, Lombard lute-fashioners, Cremona's Andreas, and Antonio, Parisians tapering their master's bow, Guiseppe Guarnieri, Stradivar, -- (Craftsmen immortal as their smooth names are!) Through them this music climbs aerial stairs, Through them thou soarest, heart, tonight -- tonight. Whither their vision with her vision fares This girl's glad heart takes flight Tonight, tonight! -- The girl of gauzes still Mothering to her will The wizard curves from which such glory springs. Her right arm swirls. Her left hand plucks the strings, Her delicate fingers move in light alarm. Leaning and cherishing, Fifth by pure fifth each string Sings to her heart's young ecstasy, swept by her swirling arm. Then, as the rhythm enlarges to the sweep Of her white arm's full arc, Deeper and deeper dark Descends upon our souls. Such portents as in sleep Baffle its calm dominion with weird dreams Now murmur to us from some mysterious steep Of Delphi or Dodona. Caverned far In the vast mountainside, where neither sun nor star May reach with hallowed ray or rosy light, But all is dreadful night, The incantations of Time's priestess sound Where, from the smoking fissures of the ground Beneath her tripod, mount in fuming vapor Ghosts of all tears and laughter, joy and sin, -- The vanished hour, the hope that might have been. Pythia and oracle their phantoms shape her, Scattering our destinies like leaves. And round her A midnight of deep notes grows still profounder. Dumb sorrow bows us down, -- when suddenly Our darkness bursts to day! Uprushing wings, buoyed on ecstasy, Storm past our eyes -- an archangelic flight Mounting to height on height, Thronging the infinite, whither they fade away. Beneath us, as above, Glow golden heavens of love Throbbing the thoughts of God like muffled thunder, Till sense is lost in vision, drowned in wonder. Then faintly, as from leagues below our sky, Pleads a far-penetrating human cry, Rises a long-familiar earth-born strain Our hearts may not deny; And, in a rush of rapture and of pain, The soul has found its fleshly home again. Aye, Circe of sound, once more against a white Vista of quivering light, From a carved resonant case of lustrous pine Of purest curves divine Whose grace created Hogarth's famous line, -- From tremoring sound-post, ebon finger-board, Your sinuous bow draws forth a deepening wail Older than sun-strung lyre, Arabian monochord, Rebec of wassail or lute of troubadour! Hark to the heart-wrung wail, Creation's oldest tale! Drawn from that smooth-shaped and harmonic chamber Of warm and deep-hued amber? Nay! As in Eden the first man's heartstrings thrilled Swept by the hand of God to life and love, When the fresh-glowing heavens their dawn fulfilled, From the rich primal passion of Man they pour And soar above, -- Those pleading notes, that wane and flame and wane Like sun-birds wounded, glorying in their pain! Here trees that sang through age-long stress and strain Reach immortality. The forest's sighing Is prisoned forever in the wood it gave, But Man matured the music it must crave, -- And this is Man's deep, inmost heart replying! Man's inmost heart, so secret from the brain In its strange agonies of joy and pain, Only in music wholly may reveal The deep faith that never dies, the deep wounds that never heal, Since Jubal of the tribe of Cain, One sacred evening in the land of Nod, Flamed on the charm. The boy through sunset trod Wielding his rude-hewn lyre of bone and horn To awe his tribe unto their souls reborn And strike them silent with the speech of God. And with what glorious myth the centuries Have fed this vestal fire unfalteringly! -- The Sun-god's power; the spouse of Niobe (He whom the very stones of Thebes obeyed); Arion, dolphin-borne across the sea; David's wild harp, and Memnon's vocal stone; Cecilia, when her saintly fingers laid Inspired Heaven upon our earthly keys, And sounded forth the angels' secrecies Meant but for Heaven alone! Oh, covenant of peace, -- Oh, light where shadows cease, -- Oh, art transcending all our human arts! At last thy message seems (Break not the faith of dreams!) That here is surcease for our burdened hearts; That here is concord 'twixt our darkened Earth And some sure Heaven above, Earth as our instrument, our Viol of Love, And we like to those sympathetic wires Laid 'neath its finger-board -- as men have said Man's own invention laid Consonant strings, in music's first rebirth; And when their joy requires What divine fingers sweep Heaven's chords in trance, That we, by consonance, Answer beneath the sky that bounds our breath, -- Answer beneath this shell of life and death? Oh, truth in dreams, -- oh, prayer of stricken hearts, -- The Viol and its parts Mingling in music, as this music saith! Yet still the child, the girl, lost in the wide High spaces of a hall, that seems to grow Greater than we may know, Sounds her sweet soul forgetful, starry-eyed; Against her well-loved music leans her cheek, Soft curve to tender curve, -- against the sleek Resonant wood of a dead-living thing Nestles her shoulder, whips the swirling bow. Murmuring streams of joy, your waters flow How clear from cool rock-springs of restfulness, Winding through woodland green where wild birds call To drop in many a silvern waterfall! . . . Slower and yet more slow The enchanting cadence chimes. . . . Then, the accelerate stress: Passionate, passionate in their soaring pride, -- Wailful, and by their sorrow deified, -- Toward the magnificent summit of song they strain, Those last wild notes of perfect purity. That height they gain Still mounting on and on . . . till a swift-rushing rain Of as pure notes -- or echoes -- showers upon us all. Deep breathing holds the hall; And we have guessed not that the girl is gone; For only harmony, -- God who is harmony, -- Knows how those living echoes linger on! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NEAR MISS HAIKU by ANSELM HOLLO OUT-OF-THE-BODY TRAVEL by STANLEY PLUMLY HE'D BE NOTHING BUT HIS VIOLIN by MARY KYLE DALLAS THE OLD VIOLIN by MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN THE VIOLINIST by MARGARET STEELE ANDERSON A VIOLINIST by FRANCIS WILLIAM BOURDILLON AS A VIOLINIST by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON THE FALCONER OF GOD by WILLIAM ROSE BENET |
|