As one who drinks from a charmèd cup
Of foaming and sparkling and murmuring

wine,
Whom, a mighty enchantress filling up,

Invites to love with her kiss divine.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

THE MONOCHORD

(Written during Music)

Is it the moved air or the moving sound
That is Life's self and draws my life from

me,
And by instinct ineffable decree
Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,

That 'mid the tide of all emergency
Now notes my separate wave, and to what

sea

Its difficult eddies labor in the ground?

O! what is this that knows the road I came, The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to

flame,

The lifted shifted steeps and all the way? That draws round me at last this wind-warm

space, And in regenerate rapture turns my face Upon the devious coverts of dismay?

Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

ON MUSIC

When thro' life unblest we rove,

Losing all that made life dear, Should some notes we used to love,

In days of boyhood, meet our ear, Oh! how welcome breathes the strain!

Wakening thoughts that long have slept, Kindling former smiles again

In faded eyes that long have wept.

Like the gale that sighs along

Beds of oriental flowers,
Is the grateful breath of song,

That once was heard in happier hours;
Fill'd with balm, the gale sighs on,

Though the flowers have sunk in death; So, when pleasure's dream is gone,

Its memory lives in Music's breath.

Music, oh, how faint, how weak,

Language fades before thy spell! Why should Feeling even speak,

When thou canst breathe her soul so well? Friendship's balmy words may feign,

Love's are ev'n more false than they;
Oh! 'tis only music's strain
Can sweetly soothe, and not betray.

Thomas Moore.

PERSISTENT MUSIC

Lo! what am I, my heart, that I should dare
To love her who will never love again:
I, standing out here in the wind and rain,
With feet unsandalled, and uncovered hair,
Singing sad words to a still sadder air,
Who know not even if my song's refrain
“Of sorrow, sorrow! loved, oh, loved in

vain!”
May reach her where she sits and hath no care.
But I will sing in every man's despite ;
Yea, too, and love, and sing of love until
My music mixes with her dreams at night;
That when Death says to me, “Lie down,

be still!”

She, pausing for my voice, and listening long, May know its silence sadder than its song.

Philip Bourke Marston.

MUSIC

When whispering strains with creeping wind
Distil soft passions through the heart;
And when at every touch we find
Our pulses beat and bear a part;

When threads can make
A heart-string ache,
Philosophy
Can scarce deny
Our souls are made of harmony.

When unto heavenly joys we faine
Whate'er the soul affecteth most,
Which only thus we can explain
By music of the heavenly host;

Whose lays we think
Make stars to wink,
Philosophy
Can scarce deny
Our souls consist of harmony.