Festive Music Should Be Low

I. Hark! through these flowers our music sends its greeting To your loved halls, where Psilas shuns the day; When the young god his Cretan nymph was meeting He taught Pan's rustic pipe this gliding lay: Soft as the dews of wine Shed in this banquet hour, The rich libation of Sound's stream divine, O reverent harp, to Aphrodite pour! II. Wild rings the trump o'er ranks to glory marching; Music's sublimer bursts for war are meet; But sweet lips murmuring under wreaths o'er-arching, Find the low whispers like their own most sweet. Steal, my lull'd music, steal Like womans's half-heard tone, So that whoe'er shall hear, shall think to feel In thee the voice of lips that love his own.