Thomas Hardy - Haunting Fingers lyrics

“Are you awake,    Comrades, this silent night?   Well 'twere if all of our glossy gluey make Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!”     “O viol, my friend,    I watch, though Phosphor nears,   And I fain would drowse away to its utter end This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!” And they felt past handlers clutch them,   Though none was in the room, Old players' dead fingers touch them,    Shrunk in the tomb.     “‘Cello, good mate,    You speak my mind as yours:   Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state, Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?”     “Once I could thrill    The populace through and through,   Wake them to pa**ioned pulsings past their will.” . . . (A contra-ba**o spake so, and the rest sighed anew.) And they felt old muscles travel   Over their tense contours, And with long sk** unravel    Cunningest scores.     “The tender pat    Of her aery finger-tips   Upon me daily - I rejoiced thereat!” (Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)      “My keys' white shine,    Now sallow, met a hand   Even whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth with mine In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!” And its clavier was filmed with fingers   Like tapering flames - wan, cold - Or the nebulous light that lingers    In charnel mould.     “Gayer than most    Was I,” reverbed a drum;   “The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs! What a host I stirred - even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!”     Trilled an aged viol:    “Much tune have I set free   To spur the dance, since my first timid trial Where I had birth - far hence, in sun-swept Italy!” And he feels apt touches on him   From those that pressed him then; Who seem with their glance to con him,    Saying, “Not again!”     “A holy calm,”    Mourned a shawm's voice subdued,   “Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.”     “I faced the sock    Nightly,” twanged a sick lyre,   “Over ranked lights! O charm of life in mock, O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!” Thus they, till each past player   Stroked thinner and more thin, And the morning sky grew grayer    And day crawled in.