I.

THOSE fine-drawn stringèd notes so inly smite,
It is as if the bows of sprites could strain
The sensitive nerve-fibres of the brain,
And tune them to an all too keen delight.
And still as they resound they gather might,
Seeming a new-born pulse of life to gain
With each new bar, until the beating rain,
The deluge of quick sound, is at its height.

Then all our soul is drowned as in a sea
Of glad sensation, and we faintly seek
Some continent for boundless ecstasy:
In vain;—we are but carried down the wake
Of Time, to throb awhile primevally
With the young World in passion's blind outbreak.
II.

Is this the music that the wise presage
As of the 'Future'?—this that storms and seeks
To force each door of sense, and loudest speaks
Through organs that grow less from age to age?
Alas! its human burthens so engage
The human soul, that not for us there breaks,
Wave-like, as on a life that first awakes
The careless joy of Nature's infant stage.

We think, we toil, we hope, we love, we die,
We know and would foreknow, we doubt and fear;
Till 'neath thy spell, O Wagner! we put by
'Future' and Present too, and drawing near
The base of life, thy breath, like the wild sigh
Of some Æonian Past, steals on the ear!