Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891.

To a Face at a Concert

Edward Rowland Sill (1841–1887)

WHEN the low music makes a dusk of sound

About us, and the viol or far-off horn

Swells out above it like a wind forlorn,

That wanders seeking something never found,

What phantom in your brain, on what dim ground,

Traces its shadowy lines? What vision, born

Of unfulfillment, fades in mere self-scorn,

Or grows, from that still twilight stealing round,

When the lids droop and the hands lie unstrung?

Dare one divine your dream, while the chords weave

Their cloudy woof from key to key, and die,—

Is it one fate that, since the world was young,

Has followed man, and makes him half believe

The voice of instruments a human cry?