Music: an Ode

I.

Was it light that spake from the darkness, or musicthat shone from the word,When the night was enkindled with sound of the sunor the first-born bird?Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage of seasonsthat fall and rise,Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh, and blindedwith light that dies,Lived not surely till music spake, and the spirit of lifewas heard.

II.

Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be,Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man, and the thrallwas free.

Slave of nature and serf of time, the bondman of lifeand death,Dumb with passionless patience that breathed butforlorn and reluctant breath,Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer, andcommuned aloud with the sea.

III.

Morning spake, and he heard: and the passionatesilent noonKept for him not silence: and soft from the mountingmoonFell the sound of her splendour, heard as dawn's in thebreathless night,Not of men but of birds whose note bade man's soulquicken and leap to light:And the song of it spake, and the light and the darknessof earth were as chords in tune.