THE MESSAGE.

HEN I heard a strain of Music,
So mighty, so pure, so dear,

That my very sorrow was silent,
And my heart stood still to hear.
It rose in harmonious rushing

Of mingled voices and strings,
And I tenderly laid my message
On Music's outspread wings.

And I heard it float farther and farther,
In sound more perfect than speech,
Farther than sight can follow,

Farther than soul can reach.

And I know that at last my message
Has passed through the golden gate;
So my heart is no longer restless,

And I am content to wait.

A. A. PROCTER.

THE MONOCHORD.

(Written during Music.)

S it the moved air or the moving sound
That is Life's self and draws my life from

me,

And by instinct ineffable decree

Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
Nay, is it, Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,
That mid the tide of all emergency

Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
Its difficult eddies labour in the ground?

Oh what is this that knows the road I came,
The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
The lifted shifted steeps, and all the way?—
That draws round me at last this wind warm space
And in regenerate rapture turns my face

Upon the devious coverts of dismay?

D. G. ROSSETTI.

THE BLESSED DAMOZEL.

HE spoke as when the stars sang in their spheres.

Her voice was like the voice the stars

Had when they sang together.

D. G. ROSSETTI.

PASSION AND WORSHIP.

HY mastering Music walks the sun-lit sea; And where wan water trembles in the grove And the wan moon is all the light thereof, This harp still makes my name its voluntary.

D. G. ROSSETTI.

THE RIVER'S BANK.

IS God who tunest all things, if the soul
Be but subdued unto its lowly prison,
(Gathering from fitful changes self-control,)

Till she discerns that gentle orison

F

That bindeth all things in the solemn swell
Of mystic union: then the wandering breeze
O'er the lone pine, (like that deep-echoing shell,
Which learns the voice of its own parent seas,)
Shall be her music: Autumn's manlier throat,
Shadow and storm, bluff Winter's harbingers,
Sweetly shall blend with Summer's milder note,
Until the chastened heart serenely hears
Within that lowly chaunt a strain divine,
Which echoes back the Angelic harps on high,
Singing the great High-Priest, who at His shrine
Hath wedded all in holiest harmony.

ISAAC WILLIAMS.

here,

E cannot sit, inertly calmed, to hear
The silence broken by the step of life;
We must have Music while we languish

Loud Music, to annul our spirit's strife,

To make the soul with pleasant fancies rife,
And soothe the stranger from another sphere !

CHARLES TENNYSON.

UT he of dreams may spell the best
Who felt delicious Music thrill

His spirit in the hour of rest,

And waking, found it Music still! I would philosophy could tell

What made the sleeper dream so well.

CHARLES TENNYSON.

DOMINION.

ONSIDER it

(This outer world we tread on) as a harp

A gracious instrument on whose fair strings

We learn those airs we shall be set to play

When mortal hours are ended. Let the wings,
Man, of thy spirit move on it as wind,

And draw forth melody. Why should'st thou yet. I
Lie grovelling? More is won than e'er was lost:
Inherit. Let thy day be to thy night'

A teller of good tidings. Let thy praise

Go up as birds go up that, when they wake,! I
Shake off the dew and soar.