Three Muses Poem by Harry St Vincent Beechey

The silent voices call again,
The voices heard in childhood dreams.
Promising, entreating me to hear
The rich wild symphony of starlight gleams.

"Come listen to the moonlights mellow tone,
The dark bass of the crowding hills.
List to the oboes in the wind,
And xylophonic notes of evening's chills."

"Can't you hear the lightning's cymbal clash,
Or hear the trees, whose twigs in treble clef
Counterpoint the music of the night.
Listen Man! Please listen. Be not Deaf! "
_

"Open your eyes", they whisper now,
"See beauty in this, teeming world.
The flowers, the trees, the life in all its forms.
The wonderland of colour there unfurled."

"Observe the interplay of light and shade,
The rainbow captured in a drop of dew.
The motion poems in a world so old
Whose every movement beautifies anew."

"Take paint and canvas, try to set it down,
This beauty so intransient in the mind,
That other men may see what you have seen.
OH look Man! SEE for once, and be not Blind."
_

"What of ourselves? " they call, "The songs unsung,
The sagas that will stir man, heart and brain,
The stories of his triumphs and defeats,
The words of love, of ecstasy and pain."

"The tales to tell the children round the hearth,
Of wicked Giant and strange enchanted tower,
The gentle knights, the dragons breathing fire,
And beauteous damsel waiting in her bower."

"Drink deep the heady wine of ordered words
To scale joy's heights, or sorrows depths to plumb.
Give substance to your unvoiced dreams, and loose
The torrent that is Speech, and be not Dumb! "

"What of ourselves? " they call, "The songs unsung,
The sagas that will stir man, heart and brain,
The stories of his triumphs and defeats,
The words of love, of ecstasy and pain."
"The tales to tell the children round the hearth,
Of wicked Giant and strange enchanted tower,
The gentle knights, the dragons breathing fire,
And beauteous damsel waiting in her bower, "
"Drink deep the heady wine of ordered words
To scale joy's heights, or sorrows depths to plumb. Give substance to your unvoiced dreams, and loose
The torrent that is Speech, and be not Dumb! "

1955