Vii. Coda

Largo, Marcato

In that dark house at the road-end lives the old fiddler. Some folks say he’s ninety past. Others pretend he’s older. I don’t know. I’ve heard him play. I ask no more. The jasmine-lovely twilight settled to dark. The moon’s grace entered in like a tall girl, and softly, in the shy light ’twixt eve and night, he touched his violin. “The moon was in it first. The shepherd he played, Endymion, whose thirst with that cold star was stayed. ‘Youth, youth,’ the sobbing string called, and love that is still with the moon murmuring in the night, on her hill.... Softly; and louder then he played on colder string how, though they lose love, men forgive the heartbreaking; how they say: it is over, and her beauty is passed, but love is a lover we love to the last.... Then, on a rising chord, failure he played, and ending, when the dream adored is broke, and there’s no mending, save in courage that is more than the dream, and stays when all her witcheries have gone their golden ways. Courage, he played, to face hope changing from little to less, and age, and the heart’s disgrace in her own ugliness. Courage, when nothing is there but the long empty road, and the grey traveller with naught in life but his load. Courage to the road-end, and after, he played, and the last breath crying ’twixt a sob and laughter ‘Death? What is death?’ The moon was in it last, and wings that brush the soul in the dark, and go past with a single beat in the hush.”