Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death, At length let up again to feel the puzzle of puzzles, And that we call Being. Walt Whitman. THE PIPE - PLAYER Cool, and palm-shaded from the torrid heat, O swart musician, time and fame are fleet, The echo of the dark-stoled bearers' feet, Who carry you, with wailing, where must lie Your swathed and withered body, by and by, In perfumed darkness with the grains of wheat. Edmund Gosse. BUGLE SONG The splendor falls on castle walls And the wild cataract leaps in glory. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying. O hark! O hear! how thin and clear, The horns of Elfland faintly blowing! O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever. Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying, And answer, echoes, answer, dying, dying, dying. Alfred Tennyson. MY OLD GUITAR By some eastern river thy rosewood grew, What maiden's fingers have swept thy strings, What odors of romance round thee cling, Oh, Muse, who dwells in the hollow shrine THE BUGLE O! wild, enchanting horn! Whose music up the deep and dewy air Swells to the clouds, and calls on Echo there, 'Till a new melody is born! Wake, wake again; the night Is bending from her throne of beauty down, With still stars beaming on her azure crown, Intense, and eloquently bright. Night, at its pulseless noon! When the far voice of waters mourns in song, And some tired watch-dog lazily and long Barks at the melancholy moon. Hark! how it sweeps away, Soaring and dying on the silent sky, As if some sprite of sound went wandering by, With lone halloo and roundelay! Swell, swell in glory out! Thy tones come pouring on my leaping heart, And my stirr'd spirit hears thee with a start As boyhood's old remember'd shout. O! have ye heard that peal, From sleeping city's moon-bathed battlements, Or from the guarded field and warrior tents, Like some near breath around you steal? Or have ye, in the roar Of sea, or storm, or battle, heard it rise, No music that of air or earth is born, THE FLUTE Puffed up with luring to her knees Grouped round the dreaming oaten quill |