 | The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder |  |
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MUSIC BENEATH THE STARS
Music beneath the Stars! remembering himWho music loved, and who on such a night
Had, through white paths celestial, winged his flight,
Hearing the chanting of the cherubim—
Which even our ears seem now to apprehend,
Rising and falling in waves of splendid sound
That bear our grieving spirits from the ground
And with eternal things lift them and blend.
Now Bach's great Aria charms the starlit dark;
Now soars the Largo, high angelical,
Soothing all mortal sorrow on that breath;
And now, O sweet and sovereign strain! now hark
Of mighty Beethoven the rise and fall.
Such music 'neath the stars abolished death.
| The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder | |