Music

That music breathes all through my spirit,
As the breezes blow through a tree;
And my soul gives light as it quivers,
Like moons on a tremulous sea.

New passions are wakened within me,
New passions that have not a name;
Dim truths that I knew but as phantoms
Stand up clear and bright in the flame.

And my soul is possessed with yearnings
Which make my life broaden and swell;
And I hear strange things that are soundless,
And I see the invisible.

Oh silence that clarion in mercy, -
For it carries my soul away;
And it whirls my thoughts out beyond me,
Like the leaves on an autumn day.

Oh exquisite tyranny! silence,
My soul slips from under my hand,
And as if by instinct is fleeing
To a dread unvisited land.

Is it sound, or fragrance, or vision?
Vocal light wavering down from above?
Past prayer and past praise I am floating
Down the rapids of speechless love.

I strove, but the sweet sounds have conquered:
Within me the Past is awake;
The Present is grandly transfigured;
The Future is clear as day-break.

Now Past, Present, Future have mingled
A new sort of Present to make;
And my life is all disembodied,
Without time, without space, without break.

But my soul seems floating for ever
In an orb of ravishing sounds,
Through faint-falling echoes of heavens
Mid beautiful earths without bounds.

Now sighing, as zephyrs in summer,
The concords glide in like a stream,
With a sound that is almost a silence,
Or the soundless sounds in a dream.

Then oft, when the music is faintest,
My soul has a storm in its bowers,
Like the thunder among the mountains,
Like the wind in the abbey towers.

There are sounds, like flakes of snow falling
In their silent and eddying rings;
We tremble, - - they touch us so lightly,
Like the feathers from angels wings.

There are pauses of marvellous silence.
That are full of significant sound,
Like music echoing music
Under water or under ground.

That clarion again! through what valleys
Of deep inward life did it roll,
Ere it blew that astonishing trumpet
Right down in the caves of my soul?

My mind is bewildered with echoes, -
Not all from the sweet sounds without;
But spirits are answering spirits
In a beautiful muffled shout.

Oh cease then, wild Horns! I am fainting;
If ye wail so, my heart will break;
Some one speaks to me in your speaking
In a language I cannot speak.

Though the sounds ye make are all foreign,
How native, how household they are;
The tones of old homes mixed with Heaven,
The dead and the angels, speak there.

Dear voices that long have been silenced,
Come clear from their peaceable land,
Come toned with unspeakable sweetness
From the Presence in which they stand.

Or is music the inarticulate
Speech of the angels on earth?
Or the voice of the Undiscovered
Bringing great truths to the birth?

O music! thou surely art worship;
But thou art not like praise or prayer;
And words make better thanksgiving
Than thy sweet melodies are.

There is in thee another worship,
An outflow of something divine;
For the voice of adoring silence,
If it could be a voice, were thine.

Thou art fugitive splendors made vocal,
As they glanced from that shining sea,
Where the Vision is visible music,
Making music of spirits who see.

Thou, Lord! art the Father of music;
Sweet sounds are a whisper from Thee;
Thou hast made Thy creation all anthems,
Though it singeth them silently.

But I guess by the stir of this music
What raptures in Heaven can be,
Where the sound is Thy marvellous stillness,
And the music is light out of Thee.