Speaking to the Psaltery by W.B. Yeats

I.

I have always known that there was something I disliked about singing, and / I naturally dislike print and paper, but now at last I understand why, for / I have found something better. I have just heard a poem spoken with so / delicate a sense of its rhythm, with so perfect a respect for its meaning, / that if I were a wise man and could persuade a few people to learn the art / I would never open a book of verses again. A friend, who was here a few / minutes ago, has sat with a beautiful stringed instrument upon her knee, / her fingers passing over the strings, and has spoken to me some verses / from Shelley's _Skylark_ and Sir Ector's lamentation over the dead / Launcelot out of the _Morte d'Arthur_ and some of my own poems. Wherever / the rhythm was most delicate, wherever the emotion was most ecstatic, her / art was the most beautiful, and yet, although she sometimes spoke to a / little tune, it was never singing, as we sing to-day, never anything but / speech. A singing note, a word chanted as they chant in churches, would / have spoiled everything; nor was it reciting, for she spoke to a notation / as definite as that of song, using the instrument, which murmured sweetly / and faintly, under the spoken sounds, to give her the changing notes. / Another speaker could have repeated all her effects, except those which / came from her own beautiful voice that would have given her fame if the / only art that gives the speaking voice its perfect opportunity were as / well known among us as it was known in the ancient world.