Stay with me, Poesy! Let me not stagnate!
Despairing with fools, or believing with knaves,
That men must be either the one or the other,
Victors or victims, oppressors or slaves!
Stay with me, cling to me, while there is life in me !
Lead me, assist me, direct and control!
Be in the shade what thou wert in the sunshine,
Source of true happiness, light of my soul!
(Suggested by "ALICE IN WONDERLAND.")
"POET, sit and sing to me;
Sing of how you make your rhymes,
Tweedledum and tweedledee,
I have tried it fifty times.
When I have a perfect sense,
Then I have imperfect sounds;
Vice versa! Tell me whence
You get both, I neither."
Cried the poet, "Don't you see
Easy 't is as rolling log,
Holding eel or catching flea,
Meeting friend or leaving grog!
No such matter should annoy,
Deep the poet never delves;
Take care of the sense, my boy,
And the sounds care for themselves."
"When we seek to explain our musical emotions, we look about for images calculated to excite similar emotions, and strive to convey through these images to others the effect produced by music on ourselves."— HAWEIS, Music and Morals.
WIND, and the sound of a sea
Heard in the night from afar,
Spending itself on an unknown shore,
Feeling its way o'er an unseen floor
Lighted by moon nor star;
Telling a tale to the listening ear
Of wounds and woes that the rolling year
Hath brought to the human heart;
Telling of passion and innermost pain,
Sinking and swooning, and growing again,
As the wind and the waves take part;
Lifting a voice to the voiceless skies,
Tender entreaties that faint for replies,
Pauses of sorrow that pass into sighs
Born of a secret despair;
Fluttering back on the clear tide of tone,
Gathering in force till the melody's grown
Strong to interpret the accents unknown
Haunting the dark fields of air;
Speaking the longings of life, the full soul's
Hidden desires in music that rolls
Wave-like in search of a shore ;
Eddies of harmony, floating around,
Widen in circles of lessening sound,
Die in the distance, till silence is found
And earth redemands us once more.
"THE world is very beautiful!" I said,
As, yesterday, beside the brimming stream,
Glad and alone, I watched the tremulous gleam
Slant through the wintry wood, green carpeted
With moss and fern and curving bramble spray,
And bronze the thousand russet margin-reeds,
And in the sparkling holly glint and play,
And kindle all the brier's flaming seeds.
"The world is very horrible!" I sigh,
As, in my wonted ways, to-day I tread
Chill streets, deformed with dim monotony,
Hiding strange mysteries of unknown dread, -
The reeking court, the breathless fever-den,
The haunts where things unholy throng and brood: Grim crime, the fierce despair of strong-armed men, Child infamy, and shameless womanhood.
And men have looked upon this piteous thing, -
Blank lives unvisited by beauty's spell,
And said, "Let be: it is not meet to bring
Dreams of sweet freedom to the prison cell;
Sing them no songs of things all bright and fair,
Paint them no visions of the glad and free,
Lest with purged sights their miseries they see,
And through vain longings pass to blank despair."
O brother, treading ever-darkening ways,
O sister, whelmed in ever-deepening care,
Would God we might unfold before your gaze
Some vision of the pure and true and fair!
Better to know, though sadder things be known,
Better to see, though tears half blind the sight,
Than thraldom to the sense, and heart of stone,
And horrible contentment with the night.
Oh, bring we then all sweet and gracious things
To touch the lives that lie so chill and drear,
That they may dream of some diviner sphere,
Whence each soft ray of love and beauty springs!
Each good and perfect gift is from above,
And there is healing for earth's direst woes;
God hath unsealed the springs of light and love,
To make the desert blossom as the rose.
W. WALSHAM STOWE,
Bishop of Bedford.
LONG ago a poet dreaming,
Weaving fancy's warp and woof,
Penned a tender, soothing poem
On the "Rain upon the Roof."
Once I read it, and its beauty
Filled my heart with memories sweet;
Days of childhood fluttered round me,
Violets sprang beneath my feet.
And my gentle, loving mother
Spoke again in accents mild,
Curbing every wayward passion
Of her happy, thoughtless child.
Then I heard the swallows twittering
Underneath the cabin eaves,
And the laughing shout of Willie
Up among the maple leaves.
Then I blessed the poet's dreaming-
Blessed his fancy's warp and woof,
And I wept o'er memories treasured,
As the rain fell on the roof.
Years ago I lost the poem,
But its sweetness lingered still,
As the freshness of the valley
Marks where flowed the springtime rill.
Lost to reach, but not to feeling;
For the rain-drop never falls
O'er my head with pattering music,
But it peoples memory's halls
With the old familiar faces
Loved and treasured long ago,
Treasured now as in life's springtime,—
For no change my heart can know.
And I live again my childhood
In the home far, far away;
Roam the woodland, orchard, wildwood,
With my playmates still at play;
Then my gray hairs press the pillow,
Holding all the world aloof,
Dreaming sweetly as I listen
To the rain upon the roof.
Every pattering drop that falleth
Seemeth like an angel's tread,
Bringing messages of mercy
To the weary heart and head.
Pleasant thoughts of years departed,
Pleasant soothings for to-day,
Earnest longings for to-morrow,
Hoping for the far away;
For I know each drop that falleth
Comes to bless the thirsty earth,
Making seed to bud and blossom,
Springing all things into birth.
As the radiant bow that scattereth
All our faithlessness with proof
Of a seedtime and a harvest,
So the rain upon the roof.
WHEN the humid shadows hover
Over all the starry spheres,
And the melancholy darkness
Gently weeps in rainy tears,
What a joy to press the pillow
Of a cottage-chamber bed,
And to listen to the patter
Of the soft rain overhead!
Every tinkle on the shingles
Has an echo in the heart,
And a thousand dreamy fancies
Into busy being start;
And a thousand recollections
Weave their air-threads into woof,
As I listen to the patter
Of the rain upon the roof.
Now in memory comes my mother
As she used in years agone,
To survey her darling dreamers
Ere she left them till the dawn:
Oh I see her leaning o'er me,
As I list to this refrain
Which is played upon the shingles
By the patter of the rain.
Then my little seraph sister,
With her wings and waving hair,
And her bright-eyed cherub brother-
A serene, angelic pair!-
Glide around my wakeful pillow,
With their praise or mild reproof,
As I listen to the murmur
Of the soft rain on the roof.
And another comes to thrill me
With her eyes' delicious blue;
And forget I, gazing on her,
That her heart was all untrue:
I remember that I loved her
As I ne'er may love again,
And my heart's quick pulses vibrate
To the patter of the rain.
There is nought in art's bravuras
That can work with such a spell
In the spirit's pure deep fountains,
Whence the holy passions swell,
As that melody of Nature,
That subdued, subduing strain,
Which is played upon the shingles
By the patter of the rain.
NOTE.This charming poem was so long a vagrant that its text became very much corrupted until the author furnished a version for publication in which the last verse read as follows:
Art hath nought of tone or cadence
That can work with such a spell
In the soul's mysterious fountains,
Whence the tears of rapture well,
As that melody of Nature,
That subdued, subduing strain,
Which is played upon the shingles
By the patter of the rain.
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