The Lute-Player / Frank Pearce Sturm

The Lute-Player

Beloved, when I see your face
Move through this green and sunlit place,
Where the cool morning-thoughts of Spring
Passing, remember no past thing,
Where feathered tumult shakes the leaves,
But no lamenting lute-string grieves,
My heart is troubled: the tall grass
That bends and whispers while you pass
Would fade, did not your secret eyes
Hide their dreams from the open skies
Beneath drooped lids: did not your hands
Bind your strange heart with occult bands.
And the light sprays that bend green tips
To touch your pale brows and red lips,
Shrink and draw back in fear and shame,
For like some white immortal flame
That burns while Time is withering,
You stand among the buds of Spring.

Ah, take your seven-stringed lute, whose wires
Once wakened green and crimson fires
Out of the slumbering gems you wore,
And when my heart awakes once more
And the flame trembles, I will sing
How fugitive are Youth and Spring:
While scented blossoms from above
Drop down their petals on our love,
And grief becomes a grey content,
Seven strings, seven sorrows, lament, lament.

~~
Frank Pearce Sturm (1879-1942)
from An Hour of Reverie, 1905

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Frank Pearce Sturm biography