(Antonius Stradivarius, 1685.)
What flights of years have gone to fashion thee,
My violin! What centuries have wrought
Thy sounding fibres! What dead fingers taught
Thy music to awake in ecstasy
Beyond our human dreams? Thy melody
Is resurrection. Every buried thought
Of singing bird, or stream, or south wind, fraught
With tender message, or of sobbing sea,
Lives once again. The tempest's solemn roll
Is in thy passion sleeping, till the king
Whose touch is mastery shall sound thy soul.
The organ tones of ocean shalt thou bring,
The crashing chords of thunder, and the whole
Vast harmony of God. Ah, Spirit, sing!