The Composer
I
The casement opens on the seaward hill,
Where cypress-spires stand slender, dark, and tall;
The winding paths grow dim; the air is still;
Cicadas sing, and dusk begins to fall.
II
The cool night brings the scent of weed and salt;
The flow'rs of night give out their sweet perfume;
A waxing moon doth climb the heavens' vault;
The slow sea, breathing, fills the quiet room.
III
O sea — now terror, now a mighty calm —
Thou leav'st none seeing thee with heart of stone;
The shore holds, turn by turn, thy rage — thy psalm
Of ripples trembling in a humble tone.
IV
The wind, thy neighbour — thin, and scarce a form —
Is wayward as thy waves; yet, as God wills,
Can crush whate'er doth stand before his storm,
Or bear sweet music gently o'er the hills.
V
All this the Composer's mind doth hold in store —
Deep, searching, piercing, ever-moving, wide —
More mighty than the storms that round it roar,
More lowly than the ripple on the tide.
VI
Within, a strain doth rise — not forged, but heard —
A little interval, a narrow door,
Older than speech, an unremembered word,
That opens on a Universe — and more.
VII
He seeks the Source — the chants of elder days,
The voices hid in every simple sound,
The modes that bear a thousand years of praise —
And, under all, the sea intones the ground.
VIII
Next comes the Law: he proves it, bar by bar;
Cicadas keep the measure, ebb and flow;
He strikes out what is trite, or leads afar;
Though cool the night, his mind with warmth doth glow.
IX
The Ways divide; the modes, though bound, run free,
Each with its pace, its life, its change, its death;
And each keeps all its dead, as keeps the sea,
Then wakes the sleeping with a single breath.
X
Lo, unforeseen, a theme long dead doth rise,
Now as remembrance raised, and born again,
Now changed, in other mode, in strange disguise;
And all the currents form one single main.
XI
He paints no glint, no shade upon the foam,
But dreadful truths Leviathan hath hid
Where in the weight of waters is his home,
A thousand fathoms down, the deeps amid.
XII
The moon hath set; all sounds are stilled; the night
Lays bare her stars; and mind, past every bound,
Beholds the Boundless: sound is thought, thought light;
And thirst is slaked, and rest at last is found.
XIII
But dawn draws near, and Form renews its claim:
What knows no limit, limit must confine —
Five lines, a bar, a compass, and a name,
And one brief hour to bear the whole design.
XIV
He leaves the Boundless, willing, unconstrained;
Ten thousand notes unchosen pass away;
The vast is numbered, and the free contained,
That one small Fruit may see the light of day.
XV
Whoe'er thou be, who in the lighted hall
Dost hear the Fruit, serene, complete, and fair,
And think the whole is here, and that is all,
As though it came unlaboured, light as air —
XVI
Thou knowest not the Source whence it hath sprung,
The Law that bore it, nor the Ways denied;
A Veil hangs o'er the Tree; no note, no tongue
Can tell what lived unheard, and unespied.
XVII
But he who wrought it, lord of it entire,
May give it to the world, or put it by,
Or with his own hand give it to the fire,
And watch the flame with calm and steady eye.
XVIII
He recks not which; for, ere his earthly hour,
His spirit hath the last of knowing learned,
And tasted worlds to come, and felt their power,
And all his longing to the stillness turned.
XIX
The cypress-spires stand dark against the stars;
The wind hath passed; the sea lies hushed and sealed;
And he, beholding, free of bounds and bars,
Knows Silence for the wisdom last revealed.
© Sergey Dobrenkov, 2026