Duncan Campbell Scott - An Impromptu

Here in the pungent gloom <br />Where the tamarac roses glow <br />And the balsam burns its perfume, <br />A vireo turns his slow <br />Cadence, as if he gloated <br />Over the last phrase he floated; <br />Each one he moulds and mellows <br />Matching it with its fellows: <br />So have you noted <br />How the oboe croons, <br />The canary-throated, <br />In the gloom of the violoncellos <br />And bassoons. <br /> <br />But afar in the thickset forest <br />I hear a sound go free, <br />Crashing the stately neighbours <br />The pine and the cedar tree, <br />Horns and harps and tabors, <br />Drumming and harping and horning <br />In savage minstrelsy-- <br />It wakes in my soul a warning <br />Of the wind of destiny. <br /> <br />My life is soaring and swinging <br />In triple walls of quiet, <br />In my heart there is rippling and ringing <br />A song with melodious riot, <br />When a fateful thing comes nigh it <br />A hush falls, and then <br />I hear in the thickset world <br />The wind of destiny hurled <br />On the lives of men.<br /><br />Duncan Campbell Scott<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-impromptu-3/