Classic Poem

There lay one weeping at Apollo's feet
Whose tuneful throat was like a golden well.
Her tears unutterably sweet
Made music as they fell.

" Thee have I served, O Father, all my days,
Yea, ere thy hand had made the lute-string and the lyre,
Out of my heart I snatched the terror and the fire,
And with my body wrought thy perfect praise.

" I am the rapture of the nightingale
Heavenward winging,
The song in singing,
Beauty audible.

" With rumbling thunder and discordance hideous
The gods and stars shall tumble from the sky;
But beauty's curve enmarbled lives in Phidias,
And Homer's numbers cannot die.

" To them that are my sisters thou hast given
Eternity of bronze and script and stone.
I, only I, must perish, tempest-driven,
In the great stillness where no moan
Is heard, wind stirs, nor reed is blown. "

Apollo wept.
" Most sweet, most delicate,
Death fears that he might tarry at thy gate
Too fond, too long,
And that while listening he forget the throng
Who call upon him with their piteous cries.
Thy sweetness, hence, in every song
Lives, and in each song dies. "

He paused. Unlovely grief made dark
His shining countenance, when, mark!
There rose the proud Promethean race
Untoo whose voice the thunders hark,
Who sailing in a fragile bark
Have seen the heavens face to face.

Their arms both lands and ocean span,
They snare the lightning in a trice.
Yea, by incredible device
They prison sound in curious shells,
Ad by these signs and miracles
Proclaim the masterhood of man.
O listen, all men, and rejoice,
For lo, Caruso's argent voice
Endures as granite, even so,
And Garden's song, like Plato's thought,
Or like a mighty structure wrought
By Michael Angelo!

And when the land is perished, yea,
When life forsakes us, and the rust
Has eaten bard and roundelay,
Still from the silence of the dust
Shall rise the song of yesterday!