Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/48

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And the miracle bars of skill.
"Talk to me, Tifa, talk."
"Of what, dear Beauty?"
"Ah, that is it—beauty."
I lose a whisper, and wait.
"The song—the song we heard—"
And I know I must tell again
The story of the bird, the lowland rover
That high above our mountain orchard
Sang till a cadent coast
Rose on the unbodied air,
And all our outbound dreams put back
Where his music made a shore.

(Words, words! So soft
That they may fall on pain
And make it less! Softer than leaves
Tapping a forest sleeper; while the heart
Is like a swollen glacier crowding earth.)

Up he went singing; climbed a spiral chain
That linked his joy to heaven;
And circling, swerving as he rose, he built
An airy masonry of smoothest domes
And jetting minarets, as though he saw
From his blue height a city of the East
And in a music mirror set it fair
For his high rapture. Did we see it?
Slim, flowing alleys, streets that wound
To temples cool as shaded lakes;
Pure arches, pillars of piled notes;
Cornice and frieze and pendant flung
In rillets from one tiny heart
As prodigal as God's?

What, dearest? When you die
You'll stop and live there? Not go on
To Heaven?

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