When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees,
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.

When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.

When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
While from Time’s woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.

THE REMONSTRANCE

I was at peace until you came
And set a careless mind aflame. 
I lived in quiet; cold, content;
All longing in safe banishment,
Until your ghostly lips and eyes
    Made wisdom unwise.

Naught was in me to tempt your feet
To seek a lodging.  Quite forgot
Lay the sweet solitude we two
In childhood used to wander through;
Time’s cold had closed my heart about;
    And shut you out.

Well, and what then?...  O vision grave,
Take all the little all I have! 
Strip me of what in voiceless thought
Life’s kept of life, unhoped, unsought!—­
Reverie and dream that memory must
    Hide deep in dust!

This only I say:—­Though cold and bare
The haunted house you have chosen to share,
Still ’neath its walls the moonbeam goes
    And trembles on the untended rose;

Still o’er its broken roof-tree rise
The starry arches of the skies;
And in your lightest word shall be
    The thunder of an ebbing sea.

NOCTURNE

’Tis not my voice now speaks; but a bird
In darkling forest hollows a sweet throat—­
Pleads on till distant echo too hath heard
    And doubles every note: 
So love that shrouded dwells in mystery
    Would cry and waken thee.

Thou Solitary, stir in thy still sleep;
All the night waits thee, yet thou still dream’st on. 
Furtive the shadows that about thee creep,
And cheat the shining footsteps of the moon: 
Unseal thine eyes, it is my heart that sings,
    And beats in vain its wings.

Lost in heaven’s vague, the stars burn softly through
The world’s dark latticings, we prisoned stray
Within its lovely labyrinth, and know
    Mute seraphs guard the way
Even from silence unto speech, from love
To that self’s self it still is dreaming of.

THE EXILE

I am that Adam who, with Snake for guest,
Hid anguished eyes upon Eve’s piteous breast. 
I am that Adam who, with broken wings,
Fled from the Seraph’s brazen trumpetings. 
Betrayed and fugitive, I still must roam
A world where sin, and beauty, whisper of Home.