Music

Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

Music, the greatest good that mortals know, And all of heaven we have below.

One good thing about music When it hits you You feel no pain.

And that moment when the bird sings very close To the music of what happens.

It goes like this The fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah.

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune, Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon, I heard a Negro play. Down on Lenox Avenue the other night By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light He did a lazy sway… He did a lazy sway… To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

I got the Weary Blues And I can’t be satisfied.

That it is not heard at all, but you are the music While the music lasts.

O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag— It’s so elegant So intelligent.

In summer the song sings itself above the muffled words—

Susanna’s music touched the bawdy strings Of those white elders; but, escaping, Left only Death’s ironic scraping. Now, in its immortality, it plays On the clear viol of her memory, And makes a constant sacrament of praise.

Just as my fingers on these keys Make music, so the self-same sounds On my spirit make a music, too.

Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick, Tick, tick, tick, what little iambics, While Homer and Whitman roared in the pines!

When I play on my fiddle in Dooney, Folk dance like a wave of the sea.

Elected Silence, sing to me And beat upon my whorlèd ear, Pipe me to pastures still and be The music that I care to hear.

A wandering minstrel I— And dreamy lullaby!

Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird’s throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight.

The C Major of this life.

The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard, The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky, Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard.

While you sat and played toccatas, stately at the clavichord.

Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells.

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Thou art unseen—but yet I hear thy shrill delight.