Listening
Amy Lowell
’T is you that are the music, not your song.
The song is but a door which, opening wide,
Lets forth the pent-up melody inside,
Your spirit’s harmony, which clear and strong
Sing but of you. Throughout your whole life long
Your songs, your thoughts, your doings, each divide
This perfect beauty; waves within a tide,
Or single notes amid a glorious throng.
The song of earth has many different chords;
Ocean has many moods and many tones
Yet always ocean. In the damp Spring woods
The painted trillium smiles, while crisp pine cones
Autumn alone can ripen. So is this
One music with a thousand cadences.
Amy Lowell (1824–1925) was an American poet. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry posthumously in 1926.
To Music: A Song
Robert Herrick
Music, thou queen of heaven, care-charming spell,
That strik’st a stillness into hell;
Thou that tam’st tigers, and fierce storms, that rise, . . .
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