Into sight? There was far more in it than could be seen. As the soul of the musician ascended from earth, heaven descended on him; its stars crowned his work; its moons, its suns were close beside him—“there was no more near nor far” (4). And the boundaries of time, as well as the limits of space, were gone. The _absolute_, the _perfect_ was reached; and to this palace of perfection had flocked “presences plain in the place,” from the far Future and from the mystic Past. “There was no more sea”—no more distance or separation—all one, together, perfect (5). Reached how? Through music—the only one of the arts that leads into the region of the absolute and perfect, its effects not springing from causes the operation of which can be traced, and the law of their production defined, but responding directly to the will, even as creation responded to the _fiat_ of God. Out of such simple elements can that be evoked, which should lead those who “consider” these things to “bow the head” (6, 7). But was it only for a moment? Is it gone? Forever? (8). I turn to God, and know it cannot be. Then follows that glorious passage, one of the finest in any language, every word of which should be studied, beginning—“There shall never be one lost good!” on to the end of stanza 11, which is the true climax of the poem. The last stanza may be compared to the closing one of “Saul.” It is the return from the empyrean to the plain of common life. Let some musical friend show how at the cadence of a very grand piece he would feel his way down the chromatic scale, and then pause on that poignant discord, known as “the minor ninth,” effecting, as it were, a separation (“alien ground”) from the heights just descended, and giving thus the opportunity of looking up once more before a resting-place is found in “the common chord,”—“the C major of this life.” This is a poem which should be read over and over till the music of it has fairly entered the soul. It has become common now to speak slightingly of those representations of heaven which make large use of music to give them body in our thought, as if the idea intended to be conveyed were that the joy of heaven was to consist in an endless idle singing, a concert without a finale; but this easy criticism is surely too disregardful of the distinctive feature of music so strikingly set forth in this poem—viz., that it is the only one of the arts which while strongly appealing to sense, yet in its essence belongs to the realm of the unseen, so that it is in fact the only symbol within the range of man’s experience which can even suggest the absolute, the perfect, the pure heavenly. The following passage, from the “Memorials of Frances Ridley Havergal,” (p. 151) is so strikingly illustrative of “Abt Vogler,” that we cannot forbear quoting it:—