In the gentle moods that stole upon her in those summer twilights she
became a different woman, softer in her prosperity than she had ever
been in her adversity; for some plants only blossom in sunshine.
What wonder if to her the music and the musician became one?
It is sometimes a dangerous thing to fuse the man and his talents
in this way; but it did no harm here, for Anthony Croft was his music,
and the music was Anthony Croft. When he played on his violin, it was
as if the miracle of its fashioning were again enacted; as if the bird
on the quivering bough, the mellow sunshine streaming through the lattice
of green leaves, the tinkle of the woodland stream, spoke in every tone;
and more than this, the hearth-glow in whose light the patient hands
had worked, the breath of the soul bending itself in passionate prayer
for perfection, these, too, seemed to have wrought their blessed influence
on the willing strings until the tone was laden with spiritual harmony.
One might indeed have sung of this little red violin--that looked to Lyddy,
in the sunset glow, as if it were veneered with rubies--all that
Shelley sang of another perfect instrument:--
"The artist who this viol wrought
To echo all harmonious thought,
Fell'd a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep,
Rock'd in that repose divine
Of the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of Autumn past,
And some of Spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree--
O that such our death may be!--
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,
To live in happier form again.
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