Hark, sister! hear we not the vesper hymn? And is it not the hymn that Haydn wrote? Why not push wide the window? Rob we God, If, while our praise to Him be passing by, Some air, made sweeter, tarry here with us? There, there—it dies away.—Why say “it dies”?— Because it lived?—Ay, ay, my body here, Because it moves and throbs and tells of thought And wakens thought in others, thus you know My body lives. And music, while it sounds, Does it not move and throb and tell of thought And waken thought in others?—Then it dies.— But ah, the music, it has never sinn’d, No wish has ever known save that of heaven, And need not linger long here. Yet to eyes That scan eternity, time cannot be The measure gauging vital force; nay, nay: Then heavenly lightning were a weaker thing Then earthly smoke.—Ah, sister, I have thought, If there may rise, high up in halls of heaven, Sweet echoes of our earthly lives, re-lived, Yet not as here they lived, that there may rise From earthly music, echoes just as real. At least, my Haydn’s music throbs with life. The sounds are sentient as his own dear soul; They make me thrill, as if a power should come, And touch, with hands below these fleshly robes, And clasp, as loving spirits do, the spirit. They woo me as a god might, owning heaven. Why should I not talk thus? Go bid the flowers Keep back their perfume; then, perchance, may souls, All sweet with blooming love, keep back sweet words. I love him.—Shrink not, sister. Hear you must.— And say not I am weak. Should I not grow Far weaker, holding in a love so strong? II. For years he lived there in my father’s house, My elder brother and my lover too, My helper, and my hero: all my youth Was one bright dawn about that sunny face. Four years my senior was he; yet, withal, So delicate in blunt and boyish ways, And young in all things but in being kind, He seem’d more near me. Ere I knew of it, In budding girlhood even, he had pluck’d My blushing love, and wore it on his heart; And all my life took root where sprang his own. III. Once I remember now our strolling far Down through that glen, whose deep gorge unannounced Heaves all its bordering plains to sudden hills. The time of year it was, when nature seems In mood most motherly, with every breath Held in a mild suspense above a world Of just born babyhood, when tiny leaves, Like infant fingers, reach to drain warm dews From palpitating winds, and when small brooks Do babble much, birds chirp, lambs bleat, and then, While all around is one sweet nursery, Not strange it seems that men ape childhood too, And lisp—ah me!—minute the syllables, Yet still too coarse for love’s ethereal sense! IV.