I know not in what fashion she was made, <br />Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak, <br />Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade <br />On wan or rosy cheek. <br /> <br />I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes, <br />Illumed with such strange gleams of inner light <br />As linger in the drift of London skies <br />Ere twilight turns to night. <br /> <br />I know not; I conjecture. 'Twas a girl <br />That with her own most gentle desperate hand <br />From out God's mystic setting plucked life's pearl-- <br />'Tis hard to understand. <br /> <br />So precious life is! Even to the old <br />The hours are as a miser's coins, and she-- <br />Within her hands lay youth's unminted gold <br />And all felicity. <br /> <br />The winged impetuous spirit, the white flame <br />That was her soul once, whither has it flown? <br />Above her brow gray lichens blot her name <br />Upon the carven stone. <br /> <br />This is her Book of Verses--wren-like notes, <br />Shy franknesses, blind gropings, haunting fears; <br />At times across the chords abruptly floats <br />A mist of passionate tears. <br /> <br />A fragile lyre too tensely keyed and strung, <br />A broken music, weirdly incomplete: <br />Here a proud mind, self-baffled and self-stung, <br />Lies coiled in dark defeat.<br /><br />Thomas Bailey Aldrich<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/broken-music-2/
