Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Broken Music

I know not in what fashion she was made,
  Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak,
Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade
  On wan or rosy cheek.

I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes,
  Illumed with such strange gleams of inner light
As linger in the drift of London skies
  Ere twilight turns to night.

I know not; I conjecture. 'Twas a girl
  That with her own most gentle desperate hand
From out God's mystic setting plucked life's pearl--
  'Tis hard to understand.

So precious life is! Even to the old
  The hours are as a miser's coins, and she--
Within her hands lay youth's unminted gold
  And all felicity.

The winged impetuous spirit, the white flame
  That was her soul once, whither has it flown?
Above her brow gray lichens blot her name
  Upon the carven stone.

This is her Book of Verses--wren-like notes,
  Shy franknesses, blind gropings, haunting fears;
At times across the chords abruptly floats
  A mist of passionate tears.

A fragile lyre too tensely keyed and strung,
  A broken music, weirdly incomplete:
Here a proud mind, self-baffled and self-stung,
  Lies coiled in dark defeat.