Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.
Poems of Sentiment: IV. Thought: Poetry: BooksBroken Music
Thomas Bailey Aldrich (18361907)I
Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak,
Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade
On wan or rosy cheek.
Illumed with such strange gleams of inner light
As linger in the drift of London skies
Ere twilight turns to night.
That with her own most gentle desperate hand
From out God’s mystic setting plucked life’s pearl—
’T is hard to understand.
The hours are as a miser’s coins, and she—
Within her hands lay youth’s unminted gold
And all felicity.
That was her soul once, whither has it flown?
Above her brow gray lichens blot her name
Upon the carven stone.
Shy franknesses, blind gropings, haunting fears;
At times across the chords abruptly floats
A mist of passionate tears.
A broken music, weirdly incomplete:
Here a proud mind, self-baffled and self-stung,
Lies coiled in dark defeat.