University of Virginia Library

ON MUSIC.

No! nought beneath the sun is like to thee,
Music! Of our deep souls the master-key!
The passions kindled by thy sovereign might,
Like mountain-torrents freed, in strength and light
Stream on! and, deepened, purified, sublimed,
Like exhalations that towards heaven have climbed!
And in some spirit-crucible refined,
Seem the vast sumless treasures of the mind!
The feelings' glorious affluence, which too long
May have lain choked—suppressed by grief or wrong,
Then spreads around! by thee set free at once—
And thoughts, rich thoughts, awake in deep response!
When Night with her transcendent bird is reigning,
Thou art, each sense, each wandering thought enchaining;—
When Morning laughs in beauty, hark! oh, hark!
Upspringing to the heavens loud sings the lark—
That music of the sun which seems to be
Even like the sunrise-statue's melody,
Brought forth from his own beams! Then joy swells high,
In blameless daring to the beckoning sky!
Then young Enthusiasm, revelling wild,
Kindles his thousand altars undefiled;
And Hope, the awakener, rapturously springs
To the glad strength and freedom of his wings.
Music! there is no bound to thy deep sway!
Lo, on the combat's wild eventful day
The warriors' hearts leap to thy proud appeal,
And heave against the scarce-restraining steel.
Through all the battle thunders dread and fierce,
Thy sounds of billowy exultation pierce—
Thy notes have pierced, and ring triumphant out,
Through the' echoes of the charge—the crash— the shout!
E'en through the stun of the artillery
That shakes the dome of the retorting sky!
The earth-pawing charger, maddening for the war,
The regal music hears resounding far,
And lives redoubled life through every nerve;
Tossing his mane, shortening his neck's proud curve,
While through his nostrils rolls the haughty breath,
Thickening the sulphurous clouds whose rain is death!
And glares his eye, on fire with furious wrath,
And clangs his hoof along the echoing ground,
Which with a moment's earthquake heaves around;
The trumpet's ringing blast is in his ears—
The long, long roll of stormy drums he hears—
And still he plunges on his desperate way,
While toss the plumes around like ocean-spray—
The faulchions, like forked lightnings on the waters—
The waters! Ah! the crimsoning sea of slaughters!—
But let us turn to lovelier, happier scenes,
Where summer heavens shine soft, and the heart leans
To its more sweet, and dear, and calm emotions,
Smoothed as the surface of eve's breezeless oceans!
The maidens heap their stag-like heads with flowers,
And weave the graceful dance through shadowing bowers;
But one, the brightest of that radiant band,
Smote by thy viewless and victorious wand,
Droops her fair head upon a trembling hand.
Thou hast pierced through her spirit! hast stirred up
Thoughts that were lost in youth's o'erflowing cup,
Thoughts of an absent dear one, who had been
The day-spring glory of life's opening scene!
Now hath thy strong and inly-working spell
Compelled remembrance from its folded cell;
At those dear recollected tones she starts,
Those tones that wake but glee in lighter hearts,
And sighing o'er the name she once loved best,
Wooes tender memory to her softened breast;
Hope languishes along each dying fall,
And springs responsive to the sprightlier call;
While memory throws her moonlight-rainbows round
The brooding halcyon of the seas of sound!
But when upon the poet's thrilling sense,
Thou fling'st thy spell, imperious and intense,
O, who shall tell what bright creations start
Unto his throbbing brain and burning heart!
His soul by thee is searched, winged, dowered, inspired!
His keen imagination armed and fired,
Till floats before his dream-enchanted eyes,
Girt with all luminous mysteries of the skies,
The mirage of a phantasm universe.
Doth now his soul deliriously rehearse
Its long eternities—in one dread flight!—
One strong consuming burst!—one rush of might?
Its long eternities—constrained to sweep
Into that moment's dizzying vortex deep!
Doth now his mind—his vast untrammelled mind—
To space, time, earth, creation, unconfined—
Become the centre round which, thick converging,
Suns and their systems roll! while still emerging,
As from the' undreamed profundities of space
New suns, new systems, join the immortal race?
Doth his grand thought, of more than mortal power,
Seem, in the strength of that prevailing hour,
The very pivot round which eddying turn
Careering spheres that tremble while they burn?
The prism of all unfathomable hues!—
—Mirror, which but concentrates to diffuse!
The focus of unimaginable fires!
Load-star of all that, like itself, aspires!—
While still outstretched before his conquering gaze,
Worlds, myriad worlds, exulting sweep and blaze!
Absolved from all distemperatures and glooms—
(O! how unlike this world of tears and tombs!)
Crowned with luxuriance of celestial light,
Suffused with rainbow-colourings strangely bright,
Breathing all precious summer's breathings round—
O, but this dream of worlds hath neither bourne nor bound!—
Peopled with beings glorious as the sun,
When in the crimsoning east his reign's begun!
Seraphic aspects, full of heaven and peace,
Bright with unchanging bloom, and smiles that never cease!
But when the last, last echoes murmuring roll,
O'ershadowing consciousnesses blight his soul!
That mighty mind hath rushingly retracked
Its course, like a reverted cataract!
A disenchanted desert spreads around—
Once more he treads the paths of mortal ground;
He fain would grasp that passing, fading train,
The phantasm of the Unbounded! but in vain!
Yet during that proud respite, bright and brief,
From care and strife, from memory and grief—
That deep, that full transfiguration-trance
Of thoughts, whose sovereign predominance
O'er-canopied the unlimited expanse!—
How wondrously exalted, towered the soul
Of genius! stretching on towards some far-off goal!
How kindled was the o'erwrought imagination—
Strengthened to grasp the arcana of creation!
How gloriously surcharged the awakened mind,
By riches in its unveiled depths enshrined!
By flower, and leaf, and golden-fruited branch
Of the high tree of knowledge! Launch, O, launch
Thy mind's most royally-freighted argosy,
Free poet! on the immeasurable sea
Of shadowy speculation once again!
Call back the gorgeous throngs, the astounding train,
That haunted thee when music shook the air
With piercing rapture, too intense to bear!
Call back the glorying, rushing worlds of light,
That blazed so keenly on thy inner sight,
And chain them to thy proud triumphal car,
Which th' unleashed lightnings, and the fire-tressed star,
And th' eddying whirlwinds, shall bear wildly far!
Arrest the unbounded phantasms ever fleeing!
The unfathomable depths and gulphs of being
With an unfathomable beauty fill!
For, O, the Beautiful doth haunt thee still!
O, be thy deathless, thy o'erwhelming feelings,
Gathered in deathless strength to intense revealings!
O, be thine unextinguishable thought
With unextinguishable splendours fraught!
Thy dreams, that far through space have shot away
Into the unsufferable realms of day,
With an excess of glory overpowered!
O, with what dreams of heaven o'erwrought and dowered
The poet's mind shall sovereignly be
That dares to seize its birthrights and be free!
His hour of keen reflection is an hour
Girt with unknown, unutterable power!
Ah! though his themes may breathe through burning words,
Their heaven-born fire defies the lyre's frail chords!
His passion-haunted solitude is rife
Of marvels that seem teeming with deep life—
Of sceptered apparitions of the past,
Or shadowings of the future, faintly cast
Athwart his troubled spirit, faintly drawn,
Like the unreal mockery of the eastern dawn,
Ere yet the real dawn appears; but soon,
Touched by his thought, they wear the hues of noon!
His mind is lost 'midst its own wildering maze,
Dazzled by many a startling, dizzying blaze
Of phantasy too fervidly intense,
And veiled by its own dread magnificence!
His soul, o'erburthened by its own creations,
Breathless with quickening, thronging inspirations,
Mastered by visions that itself unveiled,
Enthralled by mysteries that its thought hath scaled,
Sinks into mighty stillness and repose,
While still the fount of inspiration flows;—
And still streams on with passionate persistance
Through that soul's multitudinous existence!
But loftier raptures yet the spirit await,
Which music, wondrous music, can create;
Nor in the grandly gifted mind alone,
But whereso'er the seeds of faith are sown,
When the organ's consecrated thunders swell
Till every echo seems an oracle!—
Midst the cathedral's massive-columned aisles,
Old costly shrines, and trophy-sculptured piles,
Where beats with raptured awe some lowly breast—
Ah! how its loftiest triumph is confessed!
While chorused hallelujahs burst profound,
As though a storm went by, and broke in sound,
The music of the heavens it seems to be!
Mighty to thunder-strike the immensity!
Mighty to raise the spirit from the tomb,
If 'twere, indeed, sepulchred midst its gloom!
Mighty to uplift the living soul from earth,
And pierce the shrouded secrets of its birth!
To make those trophied shrines, those sculptured stones,
Blaze like the threshold of the throne of thrones!
Most mighty when the listener there shall kneel
With heaven-touched heart that but aspires to feel!
Then, then what fervid breathings swell that heart—
What echoes from its depths responsive start!
Tempestuously—tempestuously they roll,
While glorying exultations shake his soul—
Triumphs, and mysteries, and wonders, seem
To haunt him, like the shadows of a dream;
And rushing hopes, and towering aspirations—
Raptures sublime, and breathless Adorations—
And winged Enthusiasms—pale as wo!
Starry Transcendencies, that dazzling glow—
And visioned Super-eminencies divine—
These make his swelling soul their living shrine!—
These have upon his deep-tranced thought descended—
These, with his full-rejoicing spirit blended,
Have compassed his existence! sunned his vision
With radiant glimpsings of the realms Elysian!
Thus—thus with loftiest raptures filled and fired,
The lowliest breast shall be, by faith inspired!—
With revelations of all marvels blessed,
The humblest heart shall be, by faith possessed!—
Rise!—thunderous hallelujahs! O ascend!
The hollow firmaments transpiercing rend!
Since ye can raise man's drooping soul above,
Winged on a thought-electrifying love!
Music! thou art a wondrous master-key
To the great soul and her infinity!
Ay, thou canst search the inner depths—the sealed—
The incommunicative—unrevealed!
Canst search, and stir them, too, with kindling strife,
With agony, or ecstasy of life:
Ah! e'en her depths of love—the undreamed, the unknown
Even to herself—are pierced by thee alone!
O! Music, thou'rt a thrice-charmed master-key
To the deep soul and her infinity!
Unbounded is thy wide-asserted power—
Thou crowdest ages in one passionate hour
Of love or triumph! thou canst bring the past
Even as a cloud upon a sweeping blast,
With all its rushing darkness—whence escapes
A fearful throng of shadowy phantom shapes—
Whence startlingly and breathlessly arise
Disturbing aspects, wan as twilight skies,
And beautiful—e'en to fear and painfulness!
The entombed! the lost! the loved, to all excess!
But O! what unimaginable sway
Must thine be, in the realms of boundless day!
Where through the spirit-depths thou sweepest free,
Thy language then no more a mystery—
Where universe to universe shall call,
Till all are bound in thy triumphant thrall!
Where echo may no more thy reign extend—
No echo there, where there shall be no end
To conquering harmony—for ever reigning!
Bright orb to orb — nay, heaven to heaven enchaining!
And spirit unto spirit!—there shalt thou
No longer through the obstructing senses plough
Thy lingering way; but, with the soul! the soul!
At once commingling, in full mastery roll!
All sound shall there take thy entrancing tone,
And silvery silence yield to thee alone!
There shalt thou in thy jubilant career,
Ne'er meet the passions that thou kindlest here.
The dark conflicting passions that awake
Beneath thy pure, pure spell, and dare to slake
At thy rich fountains their unholy thirst—
At thy rich fountains, that untainted burst—
Breathing of too profound, intense a bliss
To be sustained in such a life as this!