To a Stradivari Violin
O precious treasury of sounds exquisite,
The music of all time within thee sings!
Old melodies, and quaint strange whisperings
Of bye-gone songs that linger and invite.
Earth’s cry of pain, heaven’s anthems of delight.
The hopes and fears of love’s imaginings,
All found a voice upon thy thrilling strings!
Thou singest still, with changes infinite,
The heights and depths of this strange human life
With all its sorrows or its ecstasies,
Its thoughts unuttered, its most voiceless cries;
One pure tone rising always through the strife
Intense, heart-searching. Sorrow in such setting
Is a sweet dream and a more sweet forgetting.
F. S.