Ah, thought cannot far without the symbol!

 Help me, little brother, hold the trend.

 Dear good flesh, that keeps the spirit steady,

 Lest it faint, grown dizzy at thought’s end!

 Waves of sound (Is this your thought, Amati?),

 Climbing into treble thin and clear,

 Past the silence, change to waves of color,

 We must say, when eye takes place of ear?

 Not a bird-song, but it has for fellow

 Some-wood-flower, its speechless counterpart,

 Form and color moulded to one cadence,

 To voice something of the wild mute heart.

 Thrushes, we’ll suppose, have for their tune-mates

 The gold languorous lilies of the glade;

 And the whippoorwill, that plaintive dreamer,

 Some dark purple flower that loves the shade.

 The song-sparrow tells me what the clover

 Nods about beneath the gorgeous blue;

69

 While the snowballs tell me old love-stories

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