And then the hautboy played and smiled, And sang like any large-eyed child, Cool-hearted and all undefiled. "Huge Trade!" he said, "Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head And run where'er my finger led! [331] Once said a Man -- and wise was He -- `Never shalt thou the heavens see, Save as a little child thou be.'" Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling tunes The ancient wise bassoons, Like weird Gray-beard Old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes, Chanted runes: "Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, [341] The sea of all doth lash and toss, One wave forward and one across: But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest, And worst doth foam and flash to best, And curst to blest. "Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west, Love, Love alone can pore On thy dissolving score Of harsh half-phrasings, Blotted ere writ, [351] And double erasings Of chords most fit. Yea, Love, sole music-master blest, May read thy weltering palimpsest. To follow Time's dying melodies through, And never to lose the old in the new, And ever to solve the discords true -- Love alone can do. And ever Love hears the poor-folks' crying, And ever Love hears the women's sighing, [361] And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying, And ever wise childhood's deep implying, But never a trader's glozing and lying. "And yet shall Love himself be heard, Though long deferred, though long deferred: O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred: Music is Love in search of a word." ____ Baltimore, 1875. Notes: The Symphony