Music! -- Yea, and the airs you play -- Out of the faintest Far-Away And the sweetest tool and the dearest Here, With its quavering voice but its bravest cheer -- The prayer that aches to be all expressed -- The kiss of love at its tenderest: Music -- music, with glad heart-throbs Within it; and music with tears and sobs Shaking it, as the startled soul Is shaken at the shriek of the fife and roll Of the drums; -- then as suddenly lulled again With the whisper and lisp of the summer rain: Mist of melodies fragrance-fine -- The bird-song flicked from the eglantine With the dews when the springing bramble throws A rarer drench on its ripest rose, And the winged song soars up and sinks To the dove's dim coo by the river-brinks Where the ripple's voice still laughs along Its glittering path of light and song. Music, O Poet, and all your own By right of capture and that alone, -- For in it we hear the harmony Born of the earth and their air and the sea, And over and under it, and all through, We catch the chime of The Anthem, too. |