I would sing no louder than the shepherd's pipe, nor than the croon my osier cradle weaves, less loud than the lark, no louder than the ripe barley that sways, beneath the belfry's height, at dawn's immaculate threshold rustling sheaves -- no louder than the rain upon the leaves. . . . I long for song more soft than murmuring leaves, daintier than the brook through osiers singing, remoter than the soaring lark that cleaves the skies of June, unfathomed azure winging, more fugitive than at dawn the bell's faint ringing, or the hid sweet note that in my oboe grieves. But, oh! the song of love . . . O, to recapture the pensive, nonchalant, caressing air with which the Virgin mild, to wide-eyed rapture, beguiled the lovely Christchild heavenly-fair, the tune that Joseph whistled, debonair, above his joiner's bench one holy morn when, to its lilt, the Dream of the Babe was born. O frailest sounds! O song's supreme delight that Jesus breathed to the skies of Bethlehem, or that the Syrians murmur in the night, waking their citharas, while over them, with slender shafts to the wistful cadence bent, their hearkening fountains form a firmament. |