Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory—
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the beloved’s bed;
And so thy thoughts when thou are gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.
There are harps that complain to the presence of night,
To the presence of night alone—
In a near and unchangeable tone—
Like winds, full of sound, that go whispering by,
As if some immortal had stooped from the sky,
And breathed out a blessing—and flown!
Yes! harps that complain to the breezes of night,
To the breezes of night...
Two armies covered hill and plain,
Where Rappahannock’s waters
Ran deeply crimsoned with the stain
Of battle’s recent slaughters.
The summer clouds lay pitched like tents
In meads of heavenly azure;
And each dread gun of the elements
Slept in its hid embrasure.
The breeze so softly blew it made
No forest leaf...
Enchantress, touch no more that strain!
I know not what it may contain,
But in my breast such mood it wakes
My very spirit almost breaks.
Thoughts come from out some hidden realm
Whose dim memorials overwhelm,
Still bring not back the things I lost,—
Still bringing all the pain they cost.
Jubilant the music through the fields a-ringing,—
Carol, warble, whistle, pipe,—endless ways of singing,
Oriole, bobolink, melody of thrushes,
Rustling trees, hum of bees, sudden little hushes,
Broken suddenly again—
Carol, whistle, rustle, humming,
In reiterate refrain,
Thither, hither, going, coming,
While...
When stars pursue their solemn flight,
Oft in the middle of the night,
A strain of music visits me,
Hushed in a moment silverly,—
Such rich and rapturous strains as make
The very soul of silence ache
With longing for the melody;
Or lovers in the distant dusk
Of summer gardens, sweet as musk,
Pouring the blissful burden...
It trembled off the keys,—a parting kiss
So sweet,—the angel slept upon his sword
As through the gate of Paradise we swept,—
Partakers of creation’s primal bliss!
—The air was heavy with the breath
Of violets and love till death.—
Forgetful of eternal banishment—
Deep down the dusk of passion-haunted ways,
Lost in the...
My body answers you, my blood
Leaps at your maddening, piercing call
The fierce notes startle, and the veil
Of this dull present seems to fall.
My soul responds to that long cry;
It wants its country, Hungary!
Not mine by birth. Yet have I not
Some strain of that old Magyar race?
Else why the secret stir of sense
At...
I Saw not they were strange, the ways I roam,
Until the music called, and called me thence,
And tears stirred in my heart as tears may come
To lonely children straying far from home,
Who know not how they wandered so, nor whence.
If I might follow far and far away
Unto the country where these songs abide,
I think my soul would...
“A note
All out of tune in this world’s instrument.”
—AMY LEVY.
I KNOW not in what fashion she was made,
Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak,
Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade
On wan or rosy cheek.
I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes
Illumed with such strange gleams of...
