A fountain plays no more: those pure cascades
And diamond plumes now sleep within their source.
A breath, a mist of joy, the woodsong fades –
The trill, the transport of his April force.
How well these hands, rippling from mood to mood,
Figured a brooding or a brilliant phrase!
Music’s dear child, how well he understood
His mother’s heart – the fury and the grace!
Patient to bear the stem ordeal of art,
Keyed to her ideal strain, he found too hard
The simple exercise of human loss.
He took the grief away, and we are less.
Laurels enough he had. Lay on his heart
A flower he never knew – the rose called Peace.