Music

I LISTEN to the accents of the silver corded harp And tho' aweary of the darts at me by malice hurl'd Aflying goes life's shuttle and aflying woof and warp— A renovated soul I seek to renovate the world. As spring is to the brooklet bound in winter's icy chain, As showers are to the blossoms parched by summer's hottest breath; As sleep is to the body bow'd by toil and rack'd by pain, So is music to this heart to whom the jars of life are death. The bonds in which I'm bound are broken by its magic power, And pent up founts of feeling flow in looks and acts that please And refreshened as the lily is refreshened by the shower, The soul from trouble freed in turn the frame from trouble frees. Nay, not freed alone from trouble, not alone by pleasure fill'd— Not alone to strength of body and to peace of mind restored; I'm thrill'd and by a feeling that the ancients may have thrill'd When they sang the golden truths and taught what later times ignored. Taught by the glamour under which I labour, bright and clear Become to me the darkest legends of an elder day; And so-called myths thus said or sung by bards illumined, wear The colours which the True itself and not the False array. 'Tis said that to the Amphionic song, sun-like, up-rose The Hundred-Gated City, and howe'er this be I know At music's touch a tower-girt citadel my spirit glows, Thro' whose illumined corridors no hydra-doubt may go. Not mine to under-go what under-went Arion, yet, From out a darker sea, the waters of affliction caught, And on a brighter than a Tenarian shore I'm set To marvel at the miracle a melody has wrought. Not mine Orpheus-like the gift to strike the lyre and chant What from another Pluto had another captive charmed; But mine to know a lesser gift has made despair to grant What Pluto's gruesome regions had a place of pleasure form'd. Nay, not a feeler merely, but an actor keen am I, Empower'd to seize the harp of life and from its cords to bring An anthem such as had compelled Apollo's self to sigh, And wrung from him the palm Marsyas tried in vain to wring. Away into the regions of delight and, what is more, Away into the regions of the inner life I'm borne To learn how Nature at one birth both light and music bore, And how the planets danced and sung upon Creation's morn. At this the giddy world may laugh; their jibes are spent in vain;— I stand above and far above the arrows at me flung:— So chant I music fired—and whatever worth my strain, For men of brain, not stocks and stones, and men of soul 'tis sung.