Lines, On Hearing A Young Gentleman, Who Is Both Lame And Blind, But In Other Respects Very Handsome, Sing And Play On His Violin For The First Time

Crippled his limbs, and sightless are his eyes;
I view the youth, and feel compassion rise.
He sings! how sweet the notes! in pleased amaze
I listen, listen, and admiring gaze.
Still, as he catches inspiration's fire,
Sweeping with bolder hands the obedient strings,
That mix, harmonious, with the strains he sings,
He pours into the music all his soul,
And governs mine with strong, but soft controul:
Raptured I glow, and more and more admire.
His mortal ailments I no longer see;
But, of divinities my fancy dreams;
Blind was the enchanting God of soft desire;
And lame the powerful Deity of fire;
His bow the magic rod of Hermes seems;
And in his voice I hear the God of harmony.

Thomas Oldham

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English

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To The Countess Of Exeter. Playing On The Lute

What charms you have, from what high race you sprung,
Have been the pleasing subjects of my song:
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An Orpheus! an Orpheus! yes, Faith may grow bold,
And take to herself all the wonders of old;
Near the stately Pantheon you'll meet with the same
In the street that from Oxford hath borrowed its name.

His station is there; and he works on the crowd,
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He fills with his power all their hearts to the brim,
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As the Moon brightens round her the clouds of the night,
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"That same first fiddler who leads the orchestra to-night
Here fiddled four decades of years ago;
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"But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier,
And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray;
Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre,
In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.

"Mid these wax figures, who nothing can do, it may seem
That to do but a little thing counts a great deal;
To be watched by kings, councillors, queens, may be flattering to him
With their glass eyes longing they too could wake notes that appeal."

* * *

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To a Pianiste

I saw thee once, I see thee now;
Thy pure young face, thy noble mien,
Thy truthful eyes, thy radiant brow;
All childlike, lovely, and serene;
Rapt in harmonious visions proud,
Scarce conscious of the audient crowd.

I heard thee when the instrument,
Possessed and quickened by thy soul,
Impassioned and intelligent,
Responded to thy full control
With all the treasures of its dower,
Its sweetest and its grandest power.

I saw and heard with such delight
As rarely charms our lower sphere
Blind Handel would not miss his sight,
Thy beauty voiced thus in his ear;
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Haunting Fingers - A Phantasy In A Museum Of Musical Instruments

"Are you awake,
Comrades, this silent night?
Well 'twere if all of our glossy gluey make
Lay 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 end
This 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 thrill
The populace through and through,
Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will." . . .
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A Singer Asleep

(Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909)



I

In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea,
That sentrys up and down all night, all day,
From cove to promontory, from ness to bay,
    The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally.

II

- It was as though a garland of red roses
Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun
When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun,
In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes,
Upon Victoria's formal middle time
    His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.

III

O that far morning of a summer day
When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay
Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes,
I walked and read with a quick glad surprise
    New words, in classic guise, -

Thomas Hardy