THIS was not music. Music is but notes Crawling like ants across the crumpled page. But this was flowers, February's daring buds Confronting Winter's rage. This was not music, a tense repeated tapping, Hammer on wire: this was the wind stepping From hill to green-furred hill. This was a wood, taking the wind's loud crash; Or clouds, high-riding the west hemisphere. This was not music's hoarse laborious drone That speaks but to the ear. —No, this was water down a steep cliff falling Perpetually—falling, leaping and falling Down cliffs steep, dark and chill. Here were the waters of the seas upgathered In one Hand archangelic, caught and furled A moment in a cloud, then slowly loosed Upon the hushing world; Then in a snare of sunny channels caught, To purge the pestilence of mortal thought, And fears of mortal ill. |