When music through my head begins to walk
I stumble for a moment, frozen there
I hesitate to move or start to talk
For fear the sounds will shortly leave the air.

I scramble for a pen, put ink to pad,
And furiously write the melody;
The passersby do surely find me mad—
I hear them not; only music I see.

And scribbling on the page I’m loath to find
The notes are ambling, drunken, to and fro;
The melody, that temptress, leaves my mind;
Leaving naught but a shadow she doth go.

And so I struggle, hoping, day by day,
For song’s return, this time not to go ‘way.