| |
| HIST, but a word, fair and soft! | |
| Forth and be judged, Master Hugues! | |
| Answer the question I ’ve put you so oft,— | |
| What do you mean by your mountainous fugues? | |
| See, we ’re alone in the loft, | 5 |
| |
| I, the poor organist here, | |
| Hugues, the composer of note,— | |
| Dead, though, and done with, this many a year,— | |
| Let ’s have a colloquy, something to quote, | |
| Make the world prick up its ear! | 10 |
| |
| See, the church empties apace. | |
| Fast they extinguish the lights,— | |
| Hallo, there, sacristan! five minutes’ grace! | |
| Here ’s a crank pedal wants setting to rights, | |
| Balks one of holding the base. | 15 |
| |
| See, our huge house of the sounds | |
| Hushing its hundreds at once, | |
| Bids the last loiterer back to his bounds | |
| O, you may challenge them, not a response | |
| Get the church saints on their rounds! | 20 |
| |
| (Saints go their rounds, who shall doubt? | |
| March, with the moon to admire, | |
| Up nave, down chancel, turn transept about, | |
| Supervise all betwixt pavement and spire, | |
| Put rats and mice to the rout,— | 25 |
| |
| Aloys and Jurien and Just,— | |
| Order things back to their place, | |
| Have a sharp eye lest the candlesticks rust, | |
| Rub the church-plate, darn the sacrament lace, | |
| Clear the desk velvet of dust.) | 30 |
| |
| Here ’s your book, younger folks shelve! | |
| Played I not off-hand and runningly, | |
| Just now, your masterpiece, hard number twelve? | |
| Here ’s what should strike,—could one handle it cunningly. | |
| Help the axe, give it a helve! | 35 |
| |
| Page after page as I played, | |
| Every bar’s rest where one wipes | |
| Sweat from one’s brow, I looked up and surveyed | |
| O’er my three claviers, you forest of pipes | |
| Whence you still peeped in the shade. | 40 |
| |
| Sure you were wishful to speak, | |
| You, with brow ruled like a score, | |
| Yes, and eyes buried in pits on each cheek | |
| Like two great breves as they wrote them of yore | |
| Each side that bar, your straight beak! | 45 |
| |
| Sure you said,—“Good, the mere notes! | |
| Still, couldst thou take my intent, | |
| Know what procured me our Company’s votes,— | |
| Masters being lauded and sciolists shent, | |
| Parted the sheep from the goats!” | 50 |
| |
| Well then, speak up, never flinch! | |
| Quick, ere my candle ’s a snuff, | |
| Burnt, do you see? to its uttermost inch,— | |
| I believe in you, but that ’s not enough. | |
| Give my conviction a clinch! | 55 |
| |
| First you deliver your phrase, | |
| Nothing propound, that I see, | |
| Fit in itself for much blame or much praise,— | |
| Answered no less, where no answer needs be; | |
| Off start the Two on their ways! | 60 |
| |
| Straight must a Third interpose, | |
| Volunteer needlessly help,— | |
| In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose, | |
| So the cry ’s open, the kennel ’s a-yelp, | |
| Argument ’s hot to the close! | 65 |
| |
| One dissertates, he is candid,— | |
| Two must discept,—has distinguished! | |
| Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did: | |
| Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished,— | |
| Back to One, goes the case bandied! | 70 |
| |
| One says his say with a difference,— | |
| More of expounding, explaining! | |
| All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance,— | |
| Now there ’s a truce, all ’s subdued, self-restraining,— | |
| Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence. | 75 |
| |
| One is incisive, corrosive,— | |
| Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant,— | |
| Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive,— | |
| Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant,— | |
| Five … O Danaides, O Sieve! | 80 |
| |
| Now, they ply axes and crowbars,— | |
| Now, they prick pins at a tissue | |
| Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar’s | |
| Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue? | |
| Where is our gain at the Two-bars? | 85 |
| |
| Est fuga, volvitur rota! | |
| On we drift. Where looms the dim port? | |
| One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota,— | |
| Something is gained, if one caught but the import,— | |
| Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha! | 90 |
| |
| What with affirming, denying, | |
| Holding, risposting, subjoining, | |
| All ’s like … it ’s like … for an instance I ’m trying … | |
| There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining | |
| Under those spider-webs lying! | 95 |
| |
| So your fugue broadens and thickens, | |
| Greatens and deepens and lengthens, | |
| Till one exclaims,—“But where ’s music, the dickens? | |
| Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens, | |
| Blacked to the stoutest of tickens!” | 100 |
| |
| I for man’s effort am zealous. | |
| Prove me such censure ’s unfounded! | |
| Seems it surprising a lover grows jealous,— | |
| Hopes ’t was for something his organ-pipes sounded, | |
| Tiring three boys at the bellows? | 105 |
| |
| Is it your moral of Life? | |
| Such a web, simple and subtle, | |
| Weave we on earth here in impotent strife, | |
| Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle, | |
| Death ending all with a knife? | 110 |
| |
| Over our heads Truth and Nature,— | |
| Still our life’s zigzags and dodges, | |
| Ins and outs weaving a new legislature,— | |
| God’s gold just shining its last where that lodges, | |
| Palled beneath Man’s usurpature! | 115 |
| |
| So we o’ershroud stars and roses, | |
| Cherub and trophy and garland. | |
| Nothings grow something which quietly closes | |
| Heaven’s earnest eye,—not a glimpse of the far land | |
| Gets through our comments and glozes. | 120 |
| |
| Ah, but traditions, inventions, | |
| (Say we and make up a visage) | |
| So many men with such various intentions | |
| Down the past ages must know more than this age! | |
| Leave the web all its dimensions! | 125 |
| |
| Who thinks Hugues wrote for the deaf? | |
| Proved a mere mountain in labor? | |
| Better submit,—try again,—what ’s the clef? | |
| ’Faith, it ’s no trifle for pipe and for tabor,— | |
| Four flats,—the minor in F. | 130 |
| |
| Friend, your fugue taxes the finger. | |
| Learning it once, who would lose it? | |
| Yet all the while a misgiving will linger,— | |
| Truth ’s golden o’er us although we refuse it,— | |
| Nature, through dust-clouds we fling her! | 135 |
| |
| Hugues! I advise meâ pœnâ | |
| (Counterpoint glares like a Gorgon) | |
| Bid One, Two, Three, Four, Five, clear the arena! | |
| Say the word, straight I unstop the Full-Organ, | |
| Blare out the mode Palestrina. | 140 |
| |
| While in the roof, if I ’m right there,— | |
| … Lo, you, the wick in the socket! | |
| Hallo, you sacristan, show us a light there! | |
| Down it dips, gone like a rocket! | |
| What, you want, do you, to come unawares, | 145 |
| Sweeping the church up for first morning-prayers, | |
| And find a poor devil at end of his cares | |
| At the foot of your rotten-planked rat-riddled stairs? | |
| Do I carry the moon in my pocket? | |
| |
