An Impromptu

Here in the pungent gloom

Where the tamarac roses glow

And the balsam burns its perfume,

A vireo turns his slow

Cadence, as if he gloated

Over the last phrase he floated;

Each one he moulds and mellows

Matching it with its fellows:

So have you noted

How the oboe croons,

The canary-throated,

In the gloom of the violoncellos

And bassoons.

But afar in the thickset forest

I hear a sound go free,

Crashing the stately neighbours

The pine and the cedar tree,

Horns and harps and tabors,

Drumming and harping and horning

In savage minstrelsy--

It wakes in my soul a warning

Of the wind of destiny.

My life is soaring and swinging

In triple walls of quiet,

In my heart there is rippling and ringing

A song with melodious riot,

When a fateful thing comes nigh it

A hush falls, and then

I hear in the thickset world

The wind of destiny hurled

On the lives of men.