The Lure Of Old Songs
The Lure Of Old Songs
1591
You were playing sweet and low,
The old songs of long ago;
And the high lamp’s crimson shade
Poured a softened light that made
Mystic shadows in your hair-
Shadows which were laughing there
As the shadows of the dawn
Leaped and laughed in days agone
So you played and so I dreamed
While the pranking firelight gleamed
In its race along the wall,
And I heard the boy days call
In the songs that thrilled my heart
With their subtly simple art-
As when practiced hands are swept
O’er a harp that long has slept
Winding paths’ through meadowlands,
Brooks that sang on silver sands,
Bending branches of the trees,
Noontime chants of honeybees,
Drifting Indian summer haze,
Pelting snows of wintry days,
Wond’rous stars that blazed above-
All this you knew nothing of
Yet you played-and, playing, wrought
All the glories unforgot;
And the high lamp’s ruddy, glow
Where the glints swayed to and fro,
Seemed some way to blend and blur
Into those fair days that were
Led me backward, mile on mile,
To each golden olden while
WD Nesbit, in Chicago Tribune