To the Unknown Love-Singers

Souls of departed Minstrels who sang well
     Your golden lays, & passed, & left no name.
If in that world of mystery where ye dwell,
     Intrude a thought of sublunary fame,
     Shoots there no pang through your ethereal frame,
To see the tuneful nurslings of your heart
     Wander unfathered, with no shield from blame
     No brown for boys that love might still impart
For all the liveliness, born of your melodious Art?

More prized than garlands for yourself, perchance,
     Is the warm welcome of your orphaned song
In happy bosoms whose quick pulses dance
     To that sweet music that the years prolong.
     Poet & Lover ne’er shall do it wrong,
If the rude world its tender thought disdains
     Fed from our hearts the gentle lay is strong
     To waft an echo to your starry plain
Full of love’s recompense for all your earthly pain!

Well may we guess your trembling citherns ring
     To songs more lofty than our thoughts can dream;
That, overflowed from music’s primal spring,
     They drown the memory of each earthly theme;
     Then should the wandering waifs, so sweet we deem,
Be doubly orphaned, exiles from your care,
     Your names and glory, to your height supreme
     Breathing no gladness from our denser air,
And, but for our poor love, be lost in dumb despair!

Haply ye sang as sings the morning bird,
     Gaily transmuting golden light to sound,
Mindless of whom the melody is heard, 
     Hung on the winds, unheeding if it found
     Some far off echo, or but touched the bound
Of the small dove-cote of a nesting mate,—
     Love’s truth for Love’s sweet sake sown freely around,
     For joy of doing, as the Gods create,
Yet serving unsought ends beyond your mortal state.

What though your fair Inspires, even as ye
     Unknown on earth, are vanished to the Unknown?
Each private heart, of Lover’s domain made free,
     Takes the sweet missive as ‘twere all its own,
     A secret whisper to itself alone,—
Forgets your centuries of forgotten dust,
     And theirs ye sang for in this nether zone;
Yet guards your alien song in sacred trust,
As might we a sweet babe upon our bounty thrust.

Let not the triumphs of your loftier sphere
     Obscure the memory of your tender lays,
That for their simple sweetness are more dear,
     And to be dear is their abounding praise.
     Lean for a moment o’er out earthly haze
And catch their murmurs from a maiden’s bower
     Full of the secret a full heart betrays
     To listening silence in the twilight hour,
And ye shall know that Love is Song’s immortal dower.