A low, sad brow with folded hair;
From whose deep night one pallid rose
White moonlight through the darkness throws.
A head, whose lordly, only crown
Of Pride, Olympian Juno might
Have worn for the great God’s delight.
Deep eyes immixed of Night and Fire,
In whose large motion you might see
Her royal soul lived royally.
Unstained by any earthly soil,
And only caring to walk straight
The road ordained to her by Fate.
Her jewelled hands across the keys
Flashed through the twilight of the room,
A double light of gem and tune.
Still while she played you saw that hand
Glide ghostly white, and fearless wave
Dead faces up from Memory’s grave.
The firelight flickered on the wall;
Sweet tears came to the heart’s relief;
She sat and sang us into grief.
Yet now, she played some liquid song,
A happy lover would have sung,
If once he could have found a tongue—
And now the sparkling octaves ran
Through the quick dance, where tangled braid
Now caught the sunlight, now the shade.
And now the boatman’s evening song,
As, rowing homeward down the stream,
He sees his maiden’s garments gleam
Beside the trees, the trysting-place;
While the sad singer whippoorwill,
Cries from the willow by the mill.
Yet, howsoe’er her music ran,
A sigh was in it, and a sense
Of some dead voice that called us hence;
A voice that even now I hear,
Although the hand that touched those keys
Rests on her heart, that sleeps in peace.
Newburgh, January 16, 1854.