What buoyant spirit breathes the breath of

morn

And earth's delight,

Trumpets, O trumpets blest!

Great voices, born

Of consecrated gest,

Across the ramparts ring and faint and fail! O echoes, pressed

On some ethereal quest,

Touch all the joyance to a tearful dew, With melancholy gathering o'er the blueInfinite hope, infinite sorrow, too!

And, heard, or guessed,

Sweet, sweet, O sweet and best,
Fall'n from some skyey crest,

O horns of heaven, give your hero hail,
Blown to him from the Kingdom of the Grail!
Harriet Prescott Spofford.

THE PIANO

Low brooding cadences that dream and cry, Life's stress and passion echoing straight and

clear;

Wild flights of notes that clamor and beat high

Into the storm and battle, or drop sheer;

Strange majesties of sound beyond all words Ringing on clouds and thunderous heights sublime;

Sad detonance of golden tones and chords
That tremble with the secret of all time;
O wrap me round; for one exulting hour
Possess my soul, and I indeed shall know
The wealth of living, the desire, the power,
The tragic sweep, the Apollonian glow;
All life shall stream before me; I shall see,
With eyes unblanched, Time and Eternity.
Archibald Lampman.

TO MY LYRE1

Hast thou upon the idle branches hung,
O Lyre, this livelong day,

Nor as the sweet wind through the rose-leaves

sung

Uttered one dulcet lay?

Come down, and by my rival touch be rung As tenderly as they!

Did not Alcæus with blood-streaming hand Range o'er his trembling wire,

An imitation of Horace, Carm. 1. 32.

Stealing forth sounds more eloquently bland Than softness could desire,

As if with myrtle bough sweet Venus fanned His rapt Lesboan lyre?

And shall not I, that never will imbrue
This hand except in wine

My battle-field a bed of violets blue,
Where conquered nymphs recline —
Shall not I wake the soul of sweetness too,
Thou gentle Lyre of mine?

George Darley.

OLD SONGS

There is many a simple song one hears,
To an outworn tune, that starts the tears;
Not for itself for the buried years.

Perchance 'twas heard in the days of youth, When breath was buoyant and words were truth;

When joys were peddled at Life's gay booth.

Or maybe it sounded along a lane

Where She walked with you- and now again

You catch Love's cadence, Love's old sweet

pain.

Or else it stole through a room where lay
A dear one dying, and seemed to say:
"Love and death, they shall pass away."

It rises out of the Long Ago,

And that is the reason it shakes you so
With pain and passion and buried woe.

There is many a simple song that brings From deeps of living, on viewless wings, The tender magic of bygone things.

Richard Burton.

A LOST CHORD

Seated one day at the organ,

I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.

I know not what I was playing,

Or what I was dreaming then, But I struck one chord of music Like the sound of a great Amen.

It flooded the crimson twilight,
Like the close of an angel's psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.

It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.

It linked all perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence,
As if it were loth to cease.

I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,

Which came from the soul of the organ

And entered into mine.

It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again;