MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT.
79
Needs the enchantment of the summer night
Another touch to make it perfect? Hark!
What sudden shaft of sound, like piercing light,
Strikes on the ear athwart the moonlit dark?
Like some keen shock of joy is heard within
The wondrous music of the violin.
Another touch to make it perfect? Hark!
What sudden shaft of sound, like piercing light,
Strikes on the ear athwart the moonlit dark?
Like some keen shock of joy is heard within
The wondrous music of the violin.
It is as if dumb Nature found a voice,
And spoke with power, though in an unknown tongue.
What kinship has the music with the noise
Of waves, or winds, or with the flowers, slow-swung
Like censers to and fro upon the air,
Or with the shadow, or the moonlight fair?
And spoke with power, though in an unknown tongue.
What kinship has the music with the noise
Of waves, or winds, or with the flowers, slow-swung
Like censers to and fro upon the air,
Or with the shadow, or the moonlight fair?
And yet it seems some subtile link exists,
We know not how. And over every phase
Of thought and feeling wandering as it lists,
Playing upon us as the west wind plays
Over the wind-harp, the subduing strain
Sweeps with resistless power of joy and pain.
We know not how. And over every phase
Of thought and feeling wandering as it lists,
Playing upon us as the west wind plays
Over the wind-harp, the subduing strain
Sweeps with resistless power of joy and pain.
Slow ebbs the golden tide and all is still.
Ask the magician at whose touch awoke
That mighty, penetrating, prisoned will,
The matchless voice that so divinely spoke,
Ask the magician at whose touch awoke
That mighty, penetrating, prisoned will,
The matchless voice that so divinely spoke,
