Breathed on the eyelids of love by music that slumbers,

[19]

Secretly, sweetly, O presence of fire and snow,

Thou comest mysterious,

In beauty imperious,

Clad on with dreams and the light of no world that we know.

Deep to my innermost soul am I shaken,

Helplessly shaken and tossed,

And of thy tyrannous yearnings so utterly taken,

My lips, unsatisfied, thirst;

Mine eyes are accurst

With longings for visions that far in the night are forsaken;

And mine ears, in listening lost,

Yearn, yearn for the note of a chord that will never awaken.

II

Like palpable music thou comest, like moonlight; and far,—

Resonant bar upon bar,—

The vibrating lyre

Of the spirit responds with melodious fire,

As thy fluttering fingers now grasp it and ardently shake,

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