HAUNTING FINGERS
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ARE you awake,Comrades, this silent night?Well ’twere if all of our glossy gluey makeLay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!” “O viol, my friend,I watch, though Phosphor nears,And I fain would drowse away to its utter endThis dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!” And they felt past handlers clutch them,Though none was in the room,Old players’ dead fingers touch them,Shrunk in the tomb. “’Cello, good mate,You speak my mind as yours:Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state,Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?” “Once I could thrillThe populace through and through,Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.” . . .(A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.) And they felt old muscles travelOver their tense contours,And with long skill unravelCunningest scores. “The tender patOf her aery finger-tipsUpon me daily—I rejoiced thereat!”(Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.) “My keys’ white shine,Now sallow, met a handEven whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth with mineIn sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!” And its clavier was filmed with fingersLike tapering flames—wan, cold—Or the nebulous light that lingersIn charnel mould. “Gayer than mostWas I,” reverbed a drum;“The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs! What a hostI stirred—even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!” Trilled an aged viol:“Much tune have I set freeTo spur the dance, since my first timid trialWhere I had birth—far hence, in sun-swept Italy!” And he feels apt touches on himFrom those that pressed him then;Who seem with their glance to con him,Saying, “Not again!” “A holy calm,”Mourned a shawm’s voice subdued,“Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalmPoured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.” “I faced the sockNightly,” twanged a sick lyre,“Over ranked lights! O charm of life in mock,O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!” Thus they, till each past playerStroked thinner and more thin,And the morning sky grew grayerAnd day crawled in.
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