My Heart is a Lute

Lady Blanche Elizabeth Fitzroy Lindsay (1844–1912)

ALAS, that my heart is a lute,

Whereon you have learned to play!

For a many years it was mute,

Until one summer’s day

You took it, and touched it, and made it thrill,

And it thrills and throbs, and quivers still!

I had known you, dear, so long!

Yet my heart did not tell me why

It should burst one morn into song,

And wake to new life with a cry,

Like a babe that sees the light of the sun,

And for whom this great world has just begun.

Your lute is enshrined, cased in,

Kept close with love’s magic key,

So no hand but yours can win

And wake it to minstrelsy;

Yet leave it not silent too long, nor alone,

Lest the strings should break, and the music be done.