The Eternal Artist. There's no grief, no pain,
But music--follow it simply as a clue,
A microcosmic pattern of the whole--
Can show you, somewhere in its golden scheme,
The use of all such discords; and, at last,
Their exquisite solution. Then darkness breaks
Into diviner light, love's agony climbs
Through death to life, and evil builds up heaven.
Have you not heard, in some great symphony,
Those golden mathematics making clear
The victory of the soul? Have you not heard
The very heavens opening?
Do those fools
Who thought me an infidel then, still smile at me
For trying to read the stars in terms of song,
Discern their orbits, measure their distances,
By musical proportions? Let them smile,
My folly at least revealed those three great laws;
Gave me the golden vases of the Egyptians,
To set in the great new temple of my God
Beyond the bounds of Egypt.
They will forget
My methods, doubtless, as the years go by,
And the world's wisdom shuts its music out.
The dust will gather on all my harmonies;
Or scholars turn my pages listlessly,
Glance at the musical phrases, and pass on,
Not troubling even to read one Latin page.
Yet they'll accept those great results as mine.
I call them mine. How can I help exulting,