Eurydice: Listening: A Picture By Burne Jones

I

As sentient as a wedding-bell,
The vibrant air throbs calling her
Whose eager body, earwise curved,
Leans listening at the heart of hell.
She is one nerve of hearing, strained
To love and suffer, hope and fear-
Thus, hearkening for her Love, she waits,
Whom no man's daring heart has gained.

II

Oh, to be sound to such an ear!
Song, carol, vesper, comfort near,
Sweet words, at sweetest, whispered low,
Or dearer silence, happiest so.
By little languages of love
Her finer audience to prove;

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poem by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
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An Ode, On the Death of Mr. Henry Purcell

Late Servant to his Majesty, and Organist of the Chapel Royal, and of St. Peter's Westminster

I

Mark how the Lark and Linnet Sing,
With rival Notes
They strain their warbling Throats,
To welcome in the Spring.
But in the close of Night,
When Philomel begins her Heav'nly lay,
They cease their mutual spite,
Drink in her Music with delight,
And list'ning and silent, and silent and list'ning,
And list'ning and silent obey.

II

So ceas'd the rival Crew when Purcell came,
They Sung no more, or only Sung his Fame.
Struck dumb they all admir'd the God-like Man,

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poem by John Dryden
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The Angel In The House. Book II. Canto I.

Preludes.

I The Song of Songs
The pulse of War, whose bloody heats
Sane purposes insanely work,
Now with fraternal frenzy beats,
And binds the Christian to the Turk,
And shrieking fifes and braggart flags,
Through quiet England, teach our breath
The courage corporate that drags
The coward to heroic death.
Too late for song! Who henceforth sings,
Must fledge his heavenly flight with more
Song-worthy and heroic things
Than hasty, home-destroying war.
While might and right are not agreed,
And battle thus is yet to wage,
So long let laurels be the meed
Of soldier as of poet sage;
But men expect the Tale of Love,

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poem by Coventry Patmore
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Singers to Come

New delights to our desire
The singers of the past can yield.
I lift mine eyes to hill and field,
And see in them your yet dumb lyre,
poets unborn and unrevealed.

Singers to come, what thoughts will start
To song? What words of yours be sent
Through man's soul, and with earth be blent?
These words of nature and the heart
Await you like an instrument.

Who knows what musical flocks of words
Upon these pine-tree tops will light,
And crown these towers in circling flight,
And cross these seas like summer birds,
And give a voice to the day and night?

Something of you already is ours;
Some mystic part of you belongs

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poem by Alice Meynell
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All Apologies to Athene

I'm so sorry dear Athene
lighting guiding
gentle musing queen
for my youth is rude
past acts oft've been obscene
my apologies for all I said I did not mean

Oh wait! do not leave Athene!
For I never meant to break Hermes' playful wings
locked in the tangled strangle hold
throws of emotive word wrestling

I do apologize oh Dear Athene
for all the dissonance I disgorged
in Orpheus's pure Pierian Spring
all the holes poked in Melpomene's self esteem
I never meant to make Thalia cry
It was wrong of me to so wantonly feed
my self destructive side
I need your love please

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poem by Gregory Allen Uhan
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At Penshurst

Had Sacharissa lived when mortals made
Choice of their deities, this sacred shade
Had held an alter to her power, that gave
The peace and glory which these alleys have;
Embroidered so with flowers where she stood,
That it became a garden of a wood.
Her presence has such more than human grace
That it can civilize the rudest place;
And beauty too, and order, can impart,
Where nature ne'er intended it, nor art.
The plants acknowledge this, and her admire
No less than those of old did Orpheus' lyre;
If she sit down, with tops all towards her bowed,
They round about her into arbors crowd;
Or if she walk, in even ranks they stand,
Like some well marshaled and obsequious band.
Amphion so made stones and timber leap
Into fair figures from a confused heap;
And in the symmetry of her parts is found
A power like that of harmony in sound.

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poem by Edmund Waller
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Unicorn 7

This forest glade, mossy, silent underfoot,
shaft of sunlight catching the quivering flight of woodland moths,
tempts even the shyest, slender deer
whose slightest nostril twitch, reveals a whole forest’s map;
the crackle of a single twig, a disappearing, graceful leap;
yet even the deer graze undisturbed
when in a thought’s space, that creature’s there;
for not proximity but presence, is what they share;
each, in peace, moves in the other’s presence;
this we know as peace.

and on the high hills where the air is ever on the move,
the eagle, circling like the first navigator
of the globe – yet seeing so much more –
glances undisturbed; with knowledge, and love, too, that’s beyond
family, or prey, when that strange, familiar white creature
with flowing mane, prances, canters, into sight; their presence shared
so far apart; so near.

and in the foamy waves, the dolphins leap and sport

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poem by Michael Shepherd
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Propertius's Bid For Immortality

Horace: Book III, Ode 3

"Carminis interea nostri redæmus in orbem---"

Let us return, then, for a time,
To our accustomed round of rhyme;
And let my songs' familiar art
Not fail to move my lady's heart.

They say that Orpheus with his lute
Had power to tame the wildest brute;
That "Vatiations on a Theme"
Of his would stay the swiftest stream.

They say that by the minstrel's song
Cithæron's rocks were moved along
To Thebes, where, as you may recall,
They formed themselves to frame a wall.

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poem by Franklin P. Adams
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Orpheus

WHEN Orpheus with his wind-swift fingers
Ripples the strings that gleam like rain,
The wheeling birds fly up and sing,
Hither, thither echoing;
There is a crackling of dry twigs,
A sweeping of leaves along the ground,
Fawny faces and dumb eyes
Peer through the fluttering screens
That mask ferocious teeth and claws
Now tranquil.
As the music sighs up the hill-side,
The young ones hear,
Come skipping, ambling, rolling down,
Their soft ears flapping as they run,
Their fleecy coats catching in the thickets,
Till they lie, listening, round his feet.
Unseen for centuries,
Fabulous creatures creep out of their caves,
The unicorn
Prances down from his bed of leaves,

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poem by Sir Osbert Sitwell
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Orpheus

A:
Not far from hence. From yonder pointed hill,
Crowned with a ring of oaks, you may behold
A dark and barren field, through which there flows,
Sluggish and black, a deep but narrow stream,
Which the wind ripples not, and the fair moon
Gazes in vain, and finds no mirror there.
Follow the herbless banks of that strange brook
Until you pause beside a darksome pond,
The fountain of this rivulet, whose gush
Cannot be seen, hid by a rayless night
That lives beneath the overhanging rock
That shades the pool—an endless spring of gloom,
Upon whose edge hovers the tender light,
Trembling to mingle with its paramour,--
But, as Syrinx fled Pan, so night flies day,
Or, with most sullen and regardless hate,
Refuses stern her heaven-born embrace.
On one side of this jagged and shapeless hill
There is a cave, from which there eddies up

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poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Summer

See what delights in sylvan scenes appear!
Descending Gods have found Elysium here.
In woods bright Venus with Adonis stray'd,
And chaste Diana haunts the forest shade.
Come lovely nymph, and bless the silent hours,
When swains from shearing seek their nightly bow'rs;
When weary reapers quit the sultry field,
And crown'd with corn, their thanks to Ceres yield.
This harmless grove no lurking viper hides,
But in my breast the serpent Love abides.
Here bees from blossoms sip the rosy dew,
But your Alexis knows no sweets but you.
Oh deign to visit our forsaken seats,
The mossy fountains, and the green retreats!
Where-e'er you walk, cool gales shall fan the glade,
Trees, where you sit, shall crowd into a shade,
Where-e'er you tread, the blushing flow'rs shall rise,
And all things flourish where you turn your eyes.
Oh! How I long with you to pass my days,
Invoke the muses, and resound your praise;

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poem by Alexander Pope
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Fantasy Of My Dreams

I am drousing
in my dream
the muses
are singing.
Uncle J.P;
in my sleep
that Agbor girl
still dances.
Over there,
the Sirens;
they are
humming,
and my ship,
I think
it is sinking.
.
Oh, Orpheus
where art
thy music?
Who else could

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poem by Efe Benjamin
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Hellas

THE world's great age begins anew,
   The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
   Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains
   From waves serener far;
A new Peneus rolls his fountains
   Against the morning star;
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep.

A loftier Argo cleaves the main,
   Fraught with a later prize;
Another Orpheus sings again,
   And loves, and weeps, and dies;
A new Ulysses leaves once more
Calypso for his native shore.

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poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Eclogue 8: To Pollio Damon Alphesiboeus

Of Damon and Alphesiboeus now,
Those shepherd-singers at whose rival strains
The heifer wondering forgot to graze,
The lynx stood awe-struck, and the flowing streams,
Unwonted loiterers, stayed their course to hear-
How Damon and Alphesiboeus sang
Their pastoral ditties, will I tell the tale.

Thou, whether broad Timavus' rocky banks
Thou now art passing, or dost skirt the shore
Of the Illyrian main,- will ever dawn
That day when I thy deeds may celebrate,
Ever that day when through the whole wide world
I may renown thy verse- that verse alone
Of Sophoclean buskin worthy found?
With thee began, to thee shall end, the strain.
Take thou these songs that owe their birth to thee,
And deign around thy temples to let creep
This ivy-chaplet 'twixt the conquering bays.

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poem by Publius Vergilius Maro
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Eclogue VIII

TO POLLIO, DAMON, ALPHESIBOEUS

Of Damon and Alphesiboeus now,
Those shepherd-singers at whose rival strains
The heifer wondering forgot to graze,
The lynx stood awe-struck, and the flowing streams,
Unwonted loiterers, stayed their course to hear-
How Damon and Alphesiboeus sang
Their pastoral ditties, will I tell the tale.
Thou, whether broad Timavus' rocky banks
Thou now art passing, or dost skirt the shore
Of the Illyrian main,- will ever dawn
That day when I thy deeds may celebrate,
Ever that day when through the whole wide world
I may renown thy verse- that verse alone
Of Sophoclean buskin worthy found?
With thee began, to thee shall end, the strain.
Take thou these songs that owe their birth to thee,
And deign around thy temples to let creep
This ivy-chaplet 'twixt the conquering bays.

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poem by Virgil
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Orpheus

Love will make men dare to die for their beloved. . . Of this
Alcestis is a monument . . . for she was willing to lay down her
life for her husband . . . and so noble did this appear to the gods
that they granted her the privilege of returning to earth . . . but
Orpheus, the son of OEagrus, they sent empty away. . .

Plato: The Symposium

Orpheus the Harper, coming to the gate
Where the implacable dim warder sate,
Besought for parley with a shade within,
Dearer to him than life itself had been,
Sweeter than sunlight on Illyrian sea,
Or bloom of myrtle, or murmur of laden bee,
Whom lately from his unconsenting breast
The Fates, at some capricious blind behest,
Intolerably had reft—Eurydice,
Dear to the sunlight as Illyrian sea,
Sweet as the murmur of bees, or myrtle bloom—
And uncompanioned led her to the tomb.

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poem by Edith Wharton
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Our Dead Singer

H. W. L.

PRIDE of the sister realm so long our own,
We claim with her that spotless fame of thine,
White as her snow and fragrant as her pine!
Ours was thy birthplace, but in every zone
Some wreath of song thy liberal hand has thrown
Breathes perfume from its blossoms, that entwine
Where'er the dewdrops fall, the sunbeams shine,
On life's long path with tangled cares o'ergrown.
Can Art thy truthful counterfeit command,--
The silver-haloed features, tranquil, mild,--
Soften the lips of bronze as when they smiled,
Give warmth and pressure to the marble hand?
Seek the lost rainbow in the sky it spanned
Farewell, sweet Singer! Heaven reclaims its child.

Carved from the block or cast in clinging mould,
Will grateful Memory fondly try her best
The mortal vesture from decay to wrest;

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poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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The Broken Circle

I STOOD On Sarum's treeless plain,
The waste that careless Nature owns;
Lone tenants of her bleak domain,
Loomed huge and gray the Druid stones.

Upheaved in many a billowy mound
The sea-like, naked turf arose,
Where wandering flocks went nibbling round
The mingled graves of friends and foes.

The Briton, Roman, Saxon, Dane,
This windy desert roamed in turn;
Unmoved these mighty blocks remain
Whose story none that lives may learn.

Erect, half buried, slant or prone,
These awful listeners, blind and dumb,
Hear the strange tongues of tribes unknown,
As wave on wave they go and come.

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poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes
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On The Death Of Mrs. Throckmorton's Bullfinch

Ye Nymphs, if e'er your eyes were red
With tears o'er hapless favourites shed,
Oh, share Maria's grief!
Her favourite, even in his cage,
(What will not hunger's cruel rage?)
Assassined by a thief.

Where Rhenus strays his vines among,
The egg was laid from which he sprung,
And though by nature mute
Or only with a whistle blessed,
Well-taught he all the sounds expressed
Of flageolet or flute.

The honours of his ebon poll
Were brighter than the sleekest mole,
His bosom of the hue
With which Aurora decks the skies,
When piping winds shall soon arise
To sweep away the dew.

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poem by William Cowper
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A Song for St. Cecilia's Day

FROM harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
When nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
'Arise, ye more than dead!'
Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony
Through all the compass of the notes it ran,
The diapason closing full in Man.

What passion cannot Music raise and quell?
When Jubal struck the chorded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,
And, wondering, on their faces fell

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poem by John Dryden
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