PREFACE.

HIS little collection is for those who love Poetry and Music, the Sister Arts which have always been inseparable.

The Music of words occupies so vast a field, that it has been very difficult to make short selections, and I beg to apologize for the scant justice done to many

of the poems.

The selections are arranged in Chronological order, but a few extracts which I was unable to identify are grouped together at the end.

I must thank most sincerely the Authors and Publishers for their kind permission, so courteously and willingly given, to make these extracts. If I have transgressed in omitting to ask leave to use some of the shorter selections, I request that I may be pardoned.

SURBITON, January 1883.

"I hardly dare

To bring a voice which thou didst never train,

To the high soaring difficult air

Of thy celestial strain."

Ode of Life.

ΤΟ

PAUL V. MENDELSSOHN BENECKE,

AS A SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF

ALL WE OWE HIS ILLUSTRIOUS GRANDFATHER,

I DEDICATE THESE SELECTIONS

FROM ENGLISH AUTHORS.

feelings nor stand as signs of thought. Here, among sweet sounds of various pitches, qualities, and strength, moulded by the mind of genius into harmonic combinations, sometimes majestic and bold, sometimes tender and plaintive, through which a melody or many deftly interwoven melodies are heard flowing ever onward in rhythmic waves, here, indeed, he feels his soul stirred to its very base by crowds of hurrying emotions, which press upon each other so rapidly that time for interpretation were wanting, even if the means were within reach. Thus snatched away from the ordinary course of thought and feeling, the musician may well believe that he is listening to the whisperings of unknown beings whose language is understood by the more spiritual side of his nature, while his common every-day mind stands looking on in wonder. But cannot Poetry produce equally strange results? In some respects it can, but the answer to this question cannot be an unqualified affirmative. From one point of view Poetry stands inferior to Music, from another it is superior. Music after a long and slow process of development has constituted itself into a recognized method of expression, in short, into a language— speaking of or speaking to the emotions, yet one which cannot be spoken or heard without the subtle aid of intellect, which is as necessary an ingredient of the genius who creates the language of Music as of the hearer who hopes to understand it. But the intangibility and

indefiniteness of the language of Music, whilst allow ing the most cultivated and refined among its hearers to soar into far-off regions of imaginative pleasure, addresses the untutored and ignorant, that is (alas !) the majority, in an absolutely unknown tongue. To these it is merely a not unpleasant collection of sounds. They may perhaps have enough knowledge to trace the different kinds and qualities of tone, but they learn nothing from, and find no meaning in such a variety; it is of no more mental import to them than a succession of sweet smells would be. In other words, Music can only call up slumbering or latent emotions, feelings already in potential existence : it cannot create new emotions for us and drive them into the soul through the ears; it can only awake vibrations among heart-strings already attuned and ready to throb in sympathetic pulses. Poetry, on the other hand, has for its plastic material, words of known meaning and common use, and when addressed to the ordinary mass of people, it is therefore less likely to be misunderstood or to convey no meaning at all. It would, however, be fallacious to jump to the conclusion that the uneducated and vulgar are capable of gathering the full meaning of the best Poetry. Of course not; the more hidden beauties both of thought and diction will be missed by them, and lost. It must be feared even by the most pronounced optimist that there will ever be swine before whom the