The Poetical Works of William Motherwell/Music
Music.
Strange how the mystically mingled sound
Of voices rising from these rifted rocks
And unseen valleys—whence no organ ever
Thundered harmonious its stupendous notes,
Nor pointed arch, nor low-browed darksome aisle,
Rolled back their mighty music—seems to me
An ocean vast, divinely undulating,
Where, bathed in beauty, floats the enraptured soul:
Now borne on the translucent deep, it skirts
Some dazzling bank of amaranthine flowers,
Now on a couch of odours cast supine,
It pants beneath o'erpowering redolence:—
Buoyant anon on a rejoicing surge,
It heaves, on tides tumultuous, far aloft,
Until it verges on the cope of heaven,
Whence issued, in their unity of joy,
The anthems of the earth-creating Morn:
Yielding again to an entrancing slumber,
In sweet abandonment, it glideth on
To amber caves and emerald palaces,
Where the lost Seraphs—welcomed by the main—
Their lyres suspended in their time of sorrow,
Amid the deepening glories of the flood;—
There the rude revels of the boisterous winds
The tranquillous waves afflict not, nor dispart
The passionate clasping of their azure arms!