Would you not say, Music intrigues me night and day? My soul is the musician's. First In my soul's love is music. Would You falsify to keep your good? Deny your theft, or put the worst Construction on your soul, obscure Thereby your soul's investiture Of music's gift and music's lure? If you were flame you would pretend What you would fain be to the end, Keep your good name and keep as well The violin. May this not be In some realm an integrity? Now for myself, dear, though I lack The gift of utterance to explain My life's pursuit and passion, pain, Or why I acted thus, concealed Thoughts that you hold were best revealed, Your eyes to heal themselves must track And find my soul's way in its quest Followed from girlhood without rest. Music is not its hope, but love.... And I saw somehow I could lift My life through you, and rise above What I had been. And since your gift Of love saw me as truthful, true I kept that best side to your view, And hoped to be what you desired If I but struggled, still aspired. And as for lapses, even while I fooled you with the wanton's smile, He was my lover till you came To light my life with purer flame. Was it, beloved, so great a sin? He was a practice violin. Oh, how I knew this when your strings Sang to me afterward when I slept Upon your breast again. I wept, Do you remember? I was grieving Neither for him, nor your deceiving, Rather (how strange is life) that he Was prelude to your harmony; Rather that while I walked with him, With you I found the cherubim, Left my old self at last with wings, Saw beauty clear where it was dim Before through my imaginings. Do you suppose the primrose knows What skill adds petals to its crown? How many failures laugh and frown Upon the hand that crosses, sows? The hand is ignorant of the power Obedient in the primrose flower To the hand's skill that toils to add New petals till the flower be clad In fuller glory. What's the bond Between us two, that I respond To what you are? Nor do you know What lies within me fain to grow Under your hand.