C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

To my Lyre

Translation of Samuel Eliot

COME, harp! in love and pleasure strung,

Thy chords too long have borne my pains:

If thy soft voice be still unwrung,

Oh, breathe the rapture that remains!

They who are sad must laugh and sing,

The slave must still seem to be free;

Among the thick throngs gathering,

There is no place for misery.

Why should I weep? The skies are bright,

Waves, woods, and fields are fresh and fair;

Far from thy strings be sounds of night,—

Come, then, and fancies rapturous dare!

Joyful and mournful be thy tones:

From crowded and from lone abodes,

Temples and cottages and thrones

Shall give thee hymns and tears and odes.

I’ll tune thee to the sighing breeze,

Or to the swift, sonorous storm;

Beneath the roofs of palaces

And hamlets, make thy shelter warm.

Come to my hands, then, harp resounding!

My life is wasted, day by day:

Its hours, as they speed onward, bounding,

Shall to thy measure pass away.