THE FUGUE

(Andante Maestoso)

Hark! like a golden thread of sound aerial A plaintive cadence from the organ steals: It trembles, rises, floats away ethereal!

The soul in silent prayer devoutly kneels.

Then comes a change: a crash of chords rolls thundering

And shakes the windows in their leaded

panes;

It thrills the throng who listen breathlesswondering,

To hear the splendor of the sequent strains.

From out the chaos of the weird prophetical Emerges like the crystal light of life

A fervid theme, spontaneous, poetical,

That sings of strenuous victory won from strife.

With deeper tones the same great theme euphonious

Ensues enmesht in woof of woven sounds,

Thus grows the fugue: a splendid web har

monious

With a whole world of beauty in its bounds.

Nathan Haskell Dole.

BEETHOVEN

Sublimest Master, thou, of harmony, From whose untroubled depths serenely flow

The sinuous streams of sweetest melody;

Now in exhaustless fulness dost thou know The joy divine thy raptured strains foretold; God's harmony thy prayer hath satisfied, His music on thy listening ear hath rolled; Accord unmarred, for which thy spirit sighed,

In its completeness, through the eternal years Is thine; thy yearning soul its echo dim Didst catch amid thy mortal woes and fears,

An earnest of the blest, perpetual hymn, And legacy to us, which shall inspire, With something of thy pure, celestial fire. Zitella Cocke.

WAGNER

Whom shall I purify? Whose soul is strong To lift the burden of a hero's grief

And dare to be reborn to give relief To his immortal suffering in song?

Canst thou with me sustain that glory's light, Which bathes the young god's earthly, human form?

Canst thou undaunted gird thee for the

storm

To buffet death itself and sink in night?

Prove thou thy mind and heart lest impotent Thou learn her boundless sorrow and be dumb,

So, false to her whose hate could over

come

The sister's love she bore nor would relent

Till on her ear that elemental roar

As of some helpless, caged and butchered thing

Now dies away, now rises thundering To die again, and all is peace once more.

Too much! Not yet, great shadows of the brain,

Not yet! Be all your fireless passions mute, Until, O music's poet, resolute

Thou bid them rise to love and hate again.

MOZART

Henry Johnson.

If to the intellect and passions strong Beethoven speak, with such resistless power, Making us share the full creative hour, When his wand fixed wild Fancy's mystic throng,

Oh, Nature's finest lyre! to thee belong

The deepest, softest tones of tenderness, Whose purity the listening angels bless, With silvery clearness of seraphic song. Sad are those chords, oh heavenward striving soul!

And love, which never found its home on earth,

Pensively vibrates, even in thy mirth, And gentle laws thy lightest notes control; Yet dear that sadness! spheral concords felt Purify most those hearts which most they melt.

Margaret Fuller Ossoli.