Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Songs to a Singer, and Other Verses (1906). III. Prelude to Day

Rosa Newmarch (1857–1940)

THE VIOLINS had stirred with hopes that died,

Like winds too weak to usher in the morn,

While to the dark-toned basses still replied

The sad, uncertain echo of the horn.

The impending mass of music seemed to brood

Inert and torpid, as nocturnal earth

Waits pulseless in the vague disquietude

Of that last hour which shrouds the daylight’s birth.

Until the blare of trumpets came to break

And splinter darkness into scarlet bars;

Then flute-scales, as from thrushes half-awake,

And harp-chords like the farewell sigh of stars.

But last of all the effulgence of your voice

Dawned, scattering all the lingering fears of night,

And bade my heart grow warm, my soul rejoice,

As though God said once more: let there be light.