To Carmen Sylva.

Oh, that the golden lyre divine     Whence David smote flame-tones were mine!     Oh, that the silent harp which hung          Untuned, unstrung,     Upon the willows by the river,     Would throb beneath my touch and quiver     With the old song-enchanted spell         Of Israel!     Oh, that the large prophetic Voice     Would make my reed-piped throat its choice!     All ears should prick, all hearts should spring,         To hear me sing     The burden of the isles, the word     Assyria knew, Damascus heard,     When, like the wind, while cedars shake,         Isaiah spake.     For I would frame a song to-day     Winged like a bird to cleave its way     O'er land and sea that spread between,         To where a Queen     Sits with a triple coronet.     Genius and Sorrow both have set     Their diadems above the gold -         A Queen three-fold!     To her the forest lent its lyre,     Hers are the sylvan dews, the fire     Of Orient suns, the mist-wreathed gleams         Of mountain streams.     She, the imperial Rhine's own child,     Takes to her heart the wood-nymph wild,     The gypsy Pelech, and the wide,         White Danube's tide.     She who beside an infant's bier     Long since resigned all hope to hear     The sacred name of "Mother" bless         Her childlessness,     Now from a people's sole acclaim     Receives the heart-vibrating name,     And "Mother, Mother, Mother!" fills         The echoing hills.     Yet who is he who pines apart,     Estranged from that maternal heart,     Ungraced, unfriended, and forlorn,         The butt of scorn?     An alien in his land of birth,     An outcast from his brethren's earth,     Albeit with theirs his blood mixed well         When Plevna fell?     When all Roumania's chains were riven,     When unto all his sons was given     The hero's glorious reward,         Reaped by the sword, -     Wherefore was this poor thrall, whose chains     Hung heaviest, within whose veins     The oldest blood of freedom streamed,         Still unredeemed?     O Mother, Poet, Queen in one!     Pity and save - he is thy son.     For poet David's sake, the king         Of all who sing;     For thine own people's sake who share     His law, his truth, his praise, his prayer;     For his sake who was sacrificed -         His brother - Christ!