(With a Baton)

BY GRACE HAZARD CONKLING
THIS wand that tapers slenderly
From ebony to ivory
Can call from brass *and wood and strings
Beauty that is the soul of things.
With this divining-rod, among
Old woes and wonders long unsung
Thy hand shall grope, instinct to feel
What springs of music to unseal.
For thee — as when a master nods —
Shall sigh again the ancient gods;
Returning o’er their starry track,
Thy summoned heroes shall come back;
For thee shall sound the hardihood
Of Mime’s hammer in the wood,
And clearly down its glades forlorn
The challenge of young Siegfried’s horn;
Thy violins shall call and sing
Like birds in Siegmund’s House of Spring,
Or cry the heartbreak and the stress
Of Tristan’s tragic tenderness;
Thy gesture shall bewitch the sky
With wild Valkyries streaming by;
Again dark Wotan with a word
Shall splinter the new-welded sword,
Shall still the battle’s clang and shock
And ring with flame Brunnhilde’s rock;
And when on sobbing muted horns
Gray prophecies of the gray Norns
Foretell the coming twilight doom.
Across the menace and the gloom
Thy wand of magic shall not fail
To fling the radiance of the Grail.
When gods and heroes understand
And answer to thy beckoning hand,
Can I — if thou slialt set the time —
Refuse to answer thee in rhyme,
Withhold the uncourageous song
My soul has sheltered overlong ?
As though a hidden mountain spring —
Small dreaming inarticulate thing —
Enchanted broad awake, should hear
The ocean’s diapason near,
And chime of breakers on the sand
Thrill o’er the phantom hills inland
(Nor recognize the organ-sound
Of the soft-thundering pines around),
Then — music-startled out of sleep —
Should feel its tiny pulses leap,
And up the sheer blue heights of air
Against the very sun should dare
Lift its frail praise and bid rejoice
Its thin and silver-dropping voice —
So shall that sealed and secret spring
That is my soul — find voice to sing,
By thy enchantment made aware
How the deep calls along the air.
Thy orchestra awake in the sun.
At highest heave and farthest rim,
Shall fling me leagues on leagues away
The magic of its poignant spray;
And I far inland on that breath
Shall taste Life bittersweet — and Death;
Shall send my song fluttering alone
Where the sea calls unto its own —
A sea-bird beating far from me
Home to the breakers — home to sea.