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REMEMBERED MUSIC.

163

REMEMBERED MUSIC.

THICK-RUSHING, like an ocean vast
Of bisons the far prairie shaking,
The notes crowd heavily and fast
As surfs, one plunging while the last
Draws seaward from its foamy breaking.

Or in low murmurs they began,
Rising and rising momently,

As o'er a harp Æolian

A fitful breeze, until they ran

Up to a sudden ecstasy.

And then, like minute-drops of rain

Ringing in water silvery,

They lingering dropped and dropped again,
Till it was almost like a pain

To listen when the next would be.

J. R. Lowell.

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How sweet the answer Echo makes

To Music at night

When, roused by lute or horn, she wakes,

And far away o'er lawns and lakes

Goes answering light!

Yet Love hath echoes truer far

And far more sweet

Than e'er, beneath the moonlight's star,

Of horn or lute or soft guitar

The songs repeat.

'Tis when the sigh,—in youth sincere

And only then,

The sigh that's breathed for one to hear

Is by that one, that only Dear

Breathed back again.

T. Moore.

TWILIGHT.

165

TWILIGHT.

IT is the hour when from the boughs
The nightingale's high note is heard;
It is the hour when lovers' vows

Seem sweet in every whispered word;
And gentle winds, and waters near,
Make music to the lonely ear.
Each flower the dews have lightly wet,
And in the sky the stars are met,
And on the wave is deeper blue,

And on the leaf a browner hue,
And in the heaven that clear obscure,
So softly dark, and darkly pure,
Which follows the decline of day,

As twilight melts beneath the moon away.

Lord Byron.

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FROM yonder grove mark blue-eyed Eve proceed:
First through the warm and deep and scented glens,
Through the pale-glimmering privet-scented lane,
And through those alders by the river-side;
Now the soft dust impedes her, which the sheep
Have hollowed out beneath their hawthorn shade.
But ah! look yonder! see a misty tide

Rise up the hill, lay low the frowning grove,
Enwrap the gay white mansion, sap its sides
Until they melt away like chalk;

Now it comes down against our village-tower,
Covers its base, floats o'er its arches, tears
The clinging ivy from the battlements,
Mingles in broad embrace the obdurate stone,
(All one vast ocean,) and goes swelling on
In slow and silent, dim and deepening waves.
Walter Savage Landor.

A NIGHT-PIECE.

167

A NIGHT-PIECE.

-THE sky is overcast
With a continuous cloud of texture close,
Heavy and wan, all whitened by the Moon
Which through that veil is indistinctly seen,
A dull contracted circle, yielding light
So feebly spread, that not a shadow falls,
Chequering the ground-from rock, plant, tree, or tower.
At length a pleasant instantaneous gleam

Startles the pensive traveller while he treads
His lonesome path, with unobserving eye

Bent earthwards; he looks up-the clouds are split
Asunder, and above his head he sees

The clear Moon, and the glory of the heavens.
There, in a black-blue vault, she sails along
Followed by multitudes of stars, that, small
And sharp, and bright, along the dark abyss
Drive as she drives: how fast they wheel away,
Yet vanish not!-the wind is in the tree,
But they are silent;—still they roll along
Immeasurably distant; and the vault,

Built round by those white clouds, enormous clouds,
Still deepens its unfathomable depth.

At length the Vision closes; and the mind,
Not undisturbed by the delight it feels,
Which slowly settles into peaceful calm,
Is left to muse upon the solemn scene.

W. Wordsworth.

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