There in the fringe of trees between <br />the upper field and the edge of the one <br />below it that runs above the valley <br />one time I heard in the early <br />days of summer the clear ringing <br />six notes that I knew were the opening <br />of the Fingal's Cave Overture <br />I heard them again and again that year <br />and the next summer and the year <br />afterward those six descending <br />notes the same for all the changing <br />in my own life since the last time <br />I had heard them fall past me from <br />the bright air in the morning of a bird <br />and I believed that what I had heard <br />would always be there if I came again <br />to be overtaken by that season <br />in that place after the winter <br />and I would wonder again whether <br />Mendelssohn really had heard them somewhere <br />far to the north that many years ago <br />looking up from his youth to listen to <br />those six notes of an ancestor <br />spilling over from a presence neither <br />water nor human that led to the cave <br />in his mind the fluted cliffs and the wave <br />going out and the falling water <br />he thought those notes could be the music for <br />Mendelssohn is gone and Fingal is gone <br />all but his name for a cave and for one <br />piece of music and the black-capped warbler <br />as we called that bird that I remember <br />singing there those notes descending <br />from the age of the ice dripping <br />I have not heard again this year can it <br />be gone then will I not hear it <br />from now on will the overture begin <br />for a time and all those who listen <br />feel that falling in them but as always <br />without knowing what they recognize<br /><br />William Stanley Merwin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-source/
