Song

“ Wherever man might dwell.
And to each he apportioned a fragment of song—
Those broken melodies that belong
To the seraphs' chorus, that we might learn
The healing of gladness and discern
In beauty how all is well.
So music dwells in the glorious throats
Forever, and the enchanted notes
Fall with rapture upon our ears,
Moving our hearts to joy and tears
For things we cannot say. ”

“ Not my sweet lute, that wrought me wrong;
It was not song that taught me love,
But it was love that taught me song.
If song be past, and hope undone,
And pulse, and head, and heart, are flame;
It is thy work, thou faithless one! ”

“ Clearly I call, keeping the melody, An old evening-singer unceasing in song, To earls in their houses I bring great bliss; When I chant my carols in varying strains, Men sit in their dwellings silent and still. Say what I’m called who mimic so clearly The songs of a jester, and sing to the world Many a melody welcome to men. ”

“ The meaning of Song goes deep. Who is there that, in logical words, can express the effect music has upon us? A kind of inarticulate unfathomable speech, which leads us to the edge of the Infinite, and lets us for moments gaze into that!
"Nay all speech, even the commonest speech, has something of song in it: not a parish in the world but has its parish-accent;—the rhythm or tune to which the people there sing what they have to say! Accent is a kind of chanting; all men have accent of their own,—though they only notice that of others. ”

“ One hundred songs and eighty-five
Are found in songbooks, perfect, pure,
With all accessories complete,
Unblemished in their phrasing sure.
On earth is nothing nobler found,
Nor yet in heaven, than vocal song ”

“ What a gentle, mystical song resounds from among the willows, as of a nightingale endowed with a human voice in order to sing to the listening night in coherent rhymes the song of his love and his melancholy rapture. ”

“ Of balmy zephyrs, and of flowery plains,
My song, more happy, speaks a greater name,
Feels higher motives and a nobler flame.
For thee, Oh R———, the Muse attunes her strings,
And mounts sublime above inferior things. ”

“ I heard a Stock-dove sing or say
His homely tale, this very day.
His voice was buried among trees,
Yet to be come at by the breeze:
He did not cease; but coo'd—and coo'd;
And somewhat pensively he woo'd:
He sang of love with quiet blending,
Slow to begin, and never ending;
Of serious faith and inward glee;
That was the Song—the Song for me! ”

“ As they recalled the stupendous efforts of the greatest human minds, they discerned the principle of melody as they heard the songs of heaven which gave them all the sensations of color, perfume, and thought, and reminded them of the innumerable details of all the creations, as an earthly song can revive the slenderest memories of love. ”

“ If human song could flow as free as His created breeze, When, sloping from some hoary height, it sweeps the vacant seas, Then should my voice to heaven ascend, my tuneful lyre be strung, And music sweeter than the winds should roam these glens among. ”

“ Thus, spontaneous births of the instinct for love and song, undergoing countless modifications in passing from mouth to mouth, until the right form has been found at last, and sifted by the taste of generation after generation, these little songs have formed a really beautiful collection of verse, reflecting in their ardour, graceful fancy and purity of sentiment, the best characteristics of the race from which they sprung. ”

“ Go forth, little lyrics, and sing to the hearts of men. This beautiful world is full of song, and thy voices may not be heard of all—but sing on, children of ours; sing to the hearts of men, and thy song shall at least swell the universal harmony that bespeaketh God's love and the sweetness of humanity. ”

“ What music is like this,
where each note is a kiss?
The golden willows lift
their boughs the sun to sift:
Their sprays they droop to screen
the sky with veils of green,
A floating cage of song,
where feathered lovers throng. ”

“ On the great, wide, pulsing atmosphere
Till his music drowns the day.
He sings for love of the season
When the days grow warm and long,
For the beautiful God-sent reason
That his breast was born for song. ”

“ Life is not all poetry, and in those stern prose moments which will come to you as they come to us all, may the music song of this hour, like the grand old anthem which was chanted at creation's birth, float over you as a prophetic inspiration of the future haven which shall witness the consummation of more than wedded bliss. ”

“ At such a time it is made to sing a song, which, readily awakening the sympathies of the soul, causes the listener to recognize and feel the effects of the intonations of pathos, of passion, of deepest melancholy, or those of lightsomeness and wildest joy. ”

“ Observe, too, how all passionate language does of itself become musical,—with a finer music than the mere accent; the speech of a man even in zealous anger becomes a chant, a song. All deep things are Song. ”

“ The song, while it is general in its impression, should be particular in its occasion; not an abstraction of the mind, but a definite feeling, special to some certain set of circumstances. Rising from out the surface of daily experience, like the watery issuings of a fountain, it throws itself upward for a moment, then descends in a soft, glittering shower to the level whence it rose. ”

“ Methinks that now some spirit's spotless leaves
⁠Full many a bright imagining hath caught;
And many a note of song, the voiceless song
⁠Of the soul, mingled with the viewless choir
Thrilling all nature, and whose tones belong
⁠To the great Source that nature doth inspire. ”

“ The globe of poets then, The choir of angel-men, Each sing a different song, That doth to each belong. Yet the songs one and all, Are of a single call. And make one body free, Doth with itself agree. Then in society. Rises an anthem high, 'Tis as a perfume cast From all flowers far and fast ; A STRANGE BOOK 359 And every fibre heaves With perfume in its leaves, And every part doth thrill With perfume from its will. But when men sing on earth, Song hath no heavenly birth. ”

“ In its original and simplest form, before she had interpolated a verse to express some of her theological ideas, it is the perfect interpretation of a sweet, solemn, and simple thought, the tenderest and purest emotion, breathed in an equally simple, but absolutely perfect melody, that is like the flowing of limpid water, crystal clear and unbroken to the end. The heart of the world has responded, and it has a place like none other in the tongue of song. ”

“ At harvest time in our country I hear, or I imagine I hear, a sort of chorus rising over all the hills, and I meet no man who is not, deep down within him, a singer! So song follows work: so art grows out of life! ”

“ Through their singing runs a distinct strain of the minor. Its strangely sweet cadence, learned in many an hour of pain, runs as an under-chording through the song of triumph that now fills their hearts and mouths. ”

“ Lend me your song, ye nightingales! oh, pour
The mazy-running soul of melody
Into my varied verse! ”

“ All deep things are Song. It seems somehow the very central essence of us, Song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls! ”

“ 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 worlds of nature and the heart
⁠Await you like an instrument. ”

“ and then the song shall be surely full of variety, old crotchets, and most sweet closes: it shall be humorous, grave, fantastic, amorous, melancholy, sprightly, one in all, and all in one. ”

“ The meaning of the third stanza is clearer if we put it into prose as follows: Let music swell grandly on the breeze, and let the sweet song of freedom ring from all the trees; let every human being sing the song; let all living things join in the chorus. Let even the rocks break the silence and prolong the music with their echoes. ”

“ The just notion and office of the modern song, as we think of it, is to be the embodiment and expression, in beauty, of some one of those sentiments or thoughts, gay, moral, pensive, joyous, or melancholy, which are as natural and appropriate, in particular circumstances, or to certain occasions, as the odor to the flower; rising at such seasons, into the minds of all classes of persons, instinctive and unbidden, yet in obedience to some law of association which it is the gift of the poet to apprehend. ”

“ Somehow, in a rhythmic sequence of sound the satisfaction of a body in harmonious rhythm with itself and its surroundings is expressed. Then, we may imagine, the singer becomes aware of his song, and begins to think about it. The beauty of the song as a whole, the beauty of a sequence in sound that makes a unity, is consciously perceived, and a new art dawns. ”

“ When grown-up people play;
But every time I sing, myself,
It sounds a different way.
And when I've sung the book all through,
And every page, around,
I stand it upside down and sing,
To see how that will sound.
I sing how all the things outside
The window look to me;
The shiny wrinkles in the road,
And then, about my Tree;
THE GREEN SINGING-BOOK
I sing about the City, too,
The noises and the wheels;
And Windows blinking in the sun;—
I sing the way it feels.
And if a Sparrow flies across,
I put him in the Song.—
I sing whatever happens in,
To make it last for long. ”

“ "New voices come to me where'er I roam, My heart too widens with its widening home: But song grows weaker, and the heart must break For lack of voice, or fingers that can wake The lyre's full answer; nay, its chords were all Too few to meet the growing spirit's call. The former songs seem little, yet no more Can soul, hand, voice, with interchanging lore Tell what the earth is saying unto me: The secret is too great, I hear confusedly. ”

“ A music sweeter than their own.” It is a sad divorce that has long been made between poetry and song. We shall never know the full power of Poetry till she has wandered back to her original home, and found there her long-severed sister, Music. Only then, if they could find each other again, and come forth to the world in blended might, should we know the full compass of that marvelous creation which we call Poetry. ”

“ love and song are but a dream,
A flower's faint shade on life's dark stream. ”

“ As a wave of the sea turned back by song.
There are sounds where the soul's delight takes fire,
Face to face with its own desire;
A delight that rebels, a desire that reposes;
I shall hate sweet music my whole life long.
The pulse of war and passion of wonder,
The heavens that murmur, the sounds that shine,
The stars that sing and the loves that thunder,
The music burning at heart like wine,
An armed archangel whose hands raise up
All senses mixed in the spirit's cup
Till flesh and spirit are molten in sunder—
These things are over, and no more mine. ”

“ "There comes to me out of the Past A voice, whose tones are sweet and wild, Singing a song almost divine, And with a tear in every line; ”

“ That was the first sound in the song of love! Scarce more than silence is, and yet a sound. Hands of invisible spirits touch the strings Of that mysterious instrument, the soul, And play the prelude of our fate. We hear The voice prophetic, and are not alone. ”

“ It is almost impossible to make them idealize the words through the elocution of singing; and yet in the artistic rendition of a song, a ballad, or a dramatic aria, the words are often of more importance than the music. The singer should study the story of a song by reading it aloud upon the highest plane or level of emotional or dramatic expression. ”

“ All great song, from the first day when human lips contrived syllables, has been sincere song. With deliberate didactic purpose the tragedians—with pure and native passion the lyrists —fitted their perfect words to their dearest faiths. ”

“ If longing for home fill the mind, the dear scenes that cluster there are painted in many a song. Requiems to the loved departed are also here. Indeed, almost every scene to which the chequered life of man is subject is here made the refrain of song. ”

“ But approximately defined, a lyric may be said to be a poem—short, vivid, and expressive of a definite emotion, appealing more to the eye than with any ultimate view of being set to music; a song, as a composition appealing more to the ear, wherein the sentiments are more leisurely expressed, with the intention of being accompanied by music. ”

“ Heart of my heart, the world is young;
Love lies hidden in every rose!
Every song that the skylark sung
Once, we thought, must come to a close: [Pg 93]
Now we know the spirit of song,
Song that is merged in the chant of the whole,
Hand in hand as we wander along,
What should we doubt of the years that roll? ”

“ The speech of my heart will be carried on in murmurings of a song. ”

“ That music in itself, whose sounds are song, The poetry of speech? ”

“ But song has touch'd my lips with fire,
And made my heart a shrine;
For what, although alloy'd, debased,
Is in itself divine. ”

“ Now I will do nothing but listen,
To accrue what I hear into this song, to let sounds contribute toward it.
I hear bravuras of birds, bustle of growing wheat, gossip of flames, clack of sticks cooking my meals,
I hear the sound I love, the sound of the human voice, ”

“ So much difficulty has been introduced into the study of the first developments of song, by confusing these distinct sorts of composition under the name of popular poetry, that it may be well, in writing of a poem which occupies a middle place between epic and ballad, to define what we mean by each. ”