[ { "title": "Abt Vogler: After he has been extemporizing upon the musical instrument of his invention", "author": "Robert Browning", "lines": [ "Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,", " Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,", "Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed", " Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,", "Man, brute, reptile, fly,--alien of end and of aim,", " Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,--", "Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,", " And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!", "", "Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine,", " This which my keys in a crowd pressed and importuned to raise!", "Ah, one and all, how they helped, would dispart now and now combine,", " Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their master his praise!", "And one would bury his brow with a blind plunge down to hell,", " Burrow awhile and build, broad on the roots of things,", "Then up again swim into sight, having based me my palace well,", " Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the nether springs.", "", "And another would mount and march, like the excellent minion he was,", " Ay, another and yet another, one crowd but with many a crest,", "Raising my rampired walls of gold as transparent as glass,", " Eager to do and die, yield each his place to the rest:", "For higher still and higher (as a runner tips with fire,", " When a great illumination surprises a festal night--", "Outlining round and round Rome's dome from space to spire)", " Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the pride of my soul was in sight.", "", "In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was certain, to match man's birth,", " Nature in turn conceived, obeying an impulse as I;", "And the emulous heaven yearned down, made effort to reach the earth.", " As the earth had done her best, in my passion, to scale the sky:", "Novel splendours burst forth, grew familiar and dwelt with mine.", " Not a point nor peak but found and fixed its wandering star;", "Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did not pale nor pine,", " For earth had attained to heaven, there was no more near nor far.", "", "Nay more; for there wanted not who walked, in the glare and glow,", " Presences plain in the place; or, fresh, from the Protoplast,", "Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier wind should blow,", " Lured now to begin and live, in a house to their liking at last:", "Or else the wonderful Dead who have passed thro' the body and gone,", " But were back once more to breathe in an old world worth their new:", "What never had been, was now; what was, as it shall be anon;", " And what is,--shall I say, matched both? for I was made perfect too.", "", "All thro' my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,", " All thro' my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,", "All thro' music and me! For think, had I painted the whole,", " Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth:", "Had I written the same, made verse--still, effect proceeds from cause,", " Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told;", "It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws,", " Painter and poet are proud, in the artist-list enrolled:--", "", "But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,", " Existent behind all laws, that made them, and, lo, they are!", "And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,", " That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.", "Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is naught;", " It is everywhere in the world--loud, soft, and all is said:", "Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought,", " And, there! Ye have heard and seen; consider and bow the head!", "", "Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I reared;", " Gone! and the good tears start, the praises that come too slow;", "For one is assured at first, one scarce can say that he feared,", " That he even gave it a thought, the gone thing was to go.", "Never to be again! But many more of the kind", " As good, nay, better perchance: is this your comfort to me?", "To me, who must be saved because I cling with my mind", " To the same, same self, same love, same God: ay, what was, shall be.", "", "Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name?", " Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands!", "What, have fear of change from Thee who art ever the same?", " Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?", "There shall never be one lost good! What was, shall live as before;", " The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;", "What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more;", " On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven, a perfect round.", "", "All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall exist;", " Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, nor power", "Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for the melodist,", " When eternity affirms the conception of an hour.", "The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth too hard.", " The passion that left the ground to lose itself in the sky,", "Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard;", " Enough that he heard it once; we shall hear it by and by.", "", "And what is our failure here but a triumph's evidence", " For the fulness of the days? Have we withered or agonized?", "Why else was the pause prolonged but that singing might issue thence?", " Why rushed the discords in but that harmony should be prized?", "Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,", " Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:", "But God has a few of us whom He whispers in the ear;", " The rest may reason and welcome; 'tis we musicians know.", "", "Well, it is earth with me; silence resumes her reign:", " I will be patient and proud, and soberly acquiesce.", "Give me the keys. I feel for the common chord again,", " Sliding by semitones, till I sink to the minor,--yes,", "And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on alien ground,", " Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from into the deep:", "Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my resting-place is found,", " The C Major of this life: so, now I will try to sleep." ], "linecount": "96" } ]