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The Spike or Victoria University College Review 1932
Gluck
Gluck
("Che Faro Senza Eurydice.")
[It is said that Gluck, the composer of the opera Orpheus and Eurydice, used to have his pianoforte brought to him where seated in a pleasant flowery meadow, with a bottle of wine beside him, he sought thus to recapture the atmosphere and colour of the "golden age" of his classical themes.]
I know it was in this Elysian way:
Set in a meadow of tranquility,
Under soft skies, and taking princely fee
Of sunlit hours of the dreaming day,
You made your music, golden as the sway
Of regal summer, mellow like the wine
You poured of some rich hillside of the Rhine;
And Orpheus wandered there with lute and lay.
Summer, and youth and beauty in warm bloom,
And happy love singing his red-lipped tune,—
Recall them on your keys of wizardry!
Recall them,—lest the waning afternoon
Change them to shadows—shadows in the gloom—
And homeless voices cry "Eurydice!"
—Seaforth Mackenzie.
Melbourne, 1932.