Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MUSIC, by MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN Poet's Biography First Line: Thou, oh, thou! Last Line: Above the silence of a monster grave. Subject(s): Music & Musicians | ||||||||
Thou, oh, thou! Thou of the chorded shell and golden plectrum, thou Of the dark eyes and pale pacific brow! Music, who by the plangent waves, Or in the echoing night of labyrinthine caves, Or on God's mountains, lonely as the stars, Touchest reverberant bars Of immemorial sorrow and amaze; -- Keeping regret and memory awake, And all the immortal ache Of love that leans upon the past's sweet days In retrospection! -- now, oh, now, Interpreter and heart-physician, thou Who gazest on the heaven and the hell Of life, and singest each as well, Touch with thy all-mellifluous finger-tips, Or thy melodious lips, This sickness named my soul, Making it whole As is an echo of a chord, Or some symphonic word, Or sweet vibrating sigh, That deep, resurgent still doth rise and die On thy voluminous roll; Part of the beauty and the mystery That axles Earth with music; as a slave, Swinging it round and round on each sonorous pole, 'Mid spheric harmony, And choral majesty, And diapasoning of wind and wave; Speeding it on its far elliptic way 'Mid vasty anthemings of night and day -- O cosmic cry Of two eternities, wherein we see The phantasms, Death and Life, At endless strife Above the silence of a monster grave. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LINER NOTES TO AN IMAGINARY PLAYLIST by TERRANCE HAYES VARIATIONS: 13 by CONRAD AIKEN BELIEVE, BELIEVE by BOB KAUFMAN ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT by BOB KAUFMAN MUSIC by CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES THE POWER OF MUSIC by CHARLOTTE FISKE BATES KU KLUX by MADISON JULIUS CAWEIN |
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