Poems

<h4><SPAN name="THE_STRANGE_MUSIC" id="THE_STRANGE_MUSIC"></SPAN>THE STRANGE MUSIC</h4> <p>Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack,<br/> But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon his back,<br/> Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret,<br/> Still, my hope is all before me: for I cannot play it yet.<br/> <br/> In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath ere let fall,<br/> In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all;<br/> Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame,<br/> Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name.<br/> <br/> Not as mine, my soul's anointed, not as mine the rude and light<br/> Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight;<br/> Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar,<br/> Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.<br/> <br/> But on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once.<br/> Hoary Time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce.<br/> But I will not fear to match them&mdash;no, by God, I will not fear,<br/> I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.<br/> <br/><br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />