Explore "Joseph Dixon" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Who carved this shattered harp on my stone?
I died to you, no doubt. But how many harps and pianos / Wired I and tightened and disentangled for you, / Making them sweet again -- with tuning fork or without?
Oh well! A harp leaps out of the ear of a man, you say, / But whence the ear that orders the length of the strings / To a magic of numbers flying before your thought / Through a door that closes against your breathless wonder?
Is there no Ear round the ear of a man, that it senses / Through strings and columns of air the soul of sound?
I thrill as I call it a tuning fork that catches / The waves of mingled music and light from afar, / The antennae of Thought that listens through utmost space.
Surely the concord that ruled my spirit is proof / Of an Ear that tuned me, able to tune me over / And use me again if I am worthy to use.