Therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.
Music do I hear?
Ha! ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is,
When time is broke and no proportion kept!
Wilt thou have music? hark! Apollo plays
And twenty caged nightingales do sing.
Preposterous ass, that never read so far
To know the cause why music was ordain'd!
Was it not to refresh the mind df man,
After his studies or his usual pain?
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air.
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows!
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound
That breathes upon a bank, of violets,
Stealing and giving odour.
Song like a rose should be;
Each rhyme a petal sweet;
For fragrance, melody,
That when her lips repeat
The words, her heart may know
What secret makes them so.
Love, only Love.
Musick! soft charm of heav'n and earth,
Whence didst thou borrow thy auspicious birth?
Or art thou of eternal date.
Sire to thyself, thyself as old as Fate.
See to their desks Apollo's sons repair,
Swift rides the rosin o'er the horse's hair!
In unison their various tones to tune,
Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon;
In soft vibration sighs the whispering lute,
Tang goes the harpsichord, too-too the flute,
Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp,
Winds the French-horn, and twangs the tingling harp;
Till, like great Jove, the leader, figuring in,
Attunes to order the chaotic din.
So dischord ofte in musick makes the sweeter lay.
Music revives the recollections it would appease.
The gauger walked with willing foot,
And aye the gauger played the flute;
And what should Master Gauger play
But Over the Hills and Far Away.
How her fingers went when they moved by note
Through measures fine, as she marched them o'er
The yielding plank of the ivory floor.
It is the little rift within the lute
That by and by will make the music mute,
And ever widening slowly silence all.
Music that brings sweet sleep down from the blissful skies.
Music that gentlier on the spirit lies
Than tir'd eyelids upon tir'd eyes.
I can't sing. As a singist I am not a success. I am saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder even than I am.
Strange! that a harp of thousand strings
Should keep in tune so long.
And with a secret pain,
And smiles that seem akin to tears,
We hear the wild refrain.
I'm the sweetest sound in orchestra heard
Yet in orchestra never have been.
Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy,
Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale leaves listlessly
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze.
