WHAT MUSICAL SOUNDS DO YOU LOVE?
Oh for some soul-affecting scheme
Of moral music.
Wordsworth.
Music, round her creep——
Seek her out, and when you find her,
Gentle, gentlest music, wind her
Round and round,
Round and round,
With your bands of softest sound.
Barry Cornwall.
WHAT MUSICAL SOUNDS DO YOU LOVE?
The sweet and solemn sound
Of Sabbath worshippers.
W. C. Bryant.
2. The bugle, silver-tipp'd,
That with a breath, long-drawn, and slow-expiring,
Sends forth that strain, which, echoing through the wilds,
Tells of a loved one's glad return.
Southey.
3. The voice of waters, and the sheen
Of silver fountains leaping to the sea.
N. P. Willis.
4. The humbee singing
Drowsily among the flowers,
Sleepily, sleepily,
In noontide swayeth he,
Half balanced on a slender stalk.
J. R. Lowell.
5. One voice, in its low, musical depth,
More dear and thrilling than the crowds' applause;
Even as the far-off murmur of the surge,
Heard at hush'd eve, is sweeter than the homage
Of waves tumultuous, dashing at your feet.
Mrs. Ellet.
6. Small voices, and an old guitar,
Winning their way to an unguarded heart.
Rogers—Italy.
7. When soft music comes to thine ear, as thou liest at night, thine eyes half closed in sleep, and thy soul as a stream flowing at pleasant sounds. It is like the rising breeze that whirls at first the thistle's beard, then flies dark-shadowy over the grass.
Ossian.
8. Kissing cymbals making merry din.
Keats.
9. Merry cricket, twittering thing!
How you love to hear it sing!
Chirping tenant, child of mirth,
Minstrel of the poor man's hearth.
Eliza Cook.
10. The wild enchanting horn!
Whose music up the deep and dewy air,
Swells to the clouds, and calls on echo there,
Till a new melody is born.
Grenville Mellen.
11. Soft Lydian airs
Married to immortal verse;
Such as meeting soul may pierce,
In notes, with many a winding bout
Of linked with sweetness long drawn out,
With wanton heed, and giddy cunning,
The melting voice through mazes running,
Untwisting all the cords that tie
The hidden soul of harmony.
Milton—L'Allegro.
12. Words to the witches in Macbeth unknown;
Hydraulics, hydrostatics, and pneumatics,
Chlorine, and iodine, and ærostatics.
Halleck.
13. The light guitar;
Its holiest time the evening star,
When liquid voices echo far.
J. G. Percival.
14. Cataracts that blow their trumpets from the steep!
Wordsworth.
15. Through your very heart it thrilleth,
When from crimson-threaded lips
Silver-treble laughter trilleth.
Tennyson.
16. The cricket's chirp, and the answer shrill
Of the gauze-winged katydid.
J. R. Drake.
17. Naught as the music of praise and prayer
Is half so sweet.
Bowring.
18. Notes heard far off; so far, as but to seem
Like the faint exquisite music of a dream.
Moore.
19. A solemn dirge; now swelling high
In lofty strains, and now in cadence soft,
Seeming to die away upon the ear;
Then swelling loud again, reaching the skies,
As if to mingle with the music there.
Mrs. Dana.
20. Distance-mellow'd song,
From bowers of merriment.
Southey.
21. The melancholy strain of that sad bird
Who sounds at night the warning note, that shuts
The delicate young flowers.
W. G. Simms.
22. The glad voice, the laughing voice of streams,
And the low cadence of the silvery sea.
Mrs. Hemans.
23. Old songs of love and sorrow.
Mary Howitt.
24. The lively air
When love enlists the serenader's skill.
Mrs. Dana.
25. The musical confusion
Of hounds and echo in conjunction.
Midsummer Night's Dream.
26. When o'er the clear still water swells
The music of the Sabbath bells.
W. C. Bryant.
27. A deep and thrilling song,
Which seems with piercing melody to reach
The soul, and in mysterious union
Blend with all thoughts of gentleness and love.
Southey.
28. Ever wakeful echo;
The nymph of sportive mockery, that still
Hides behind every rock and every dell,
And softly glides, unseen, from hill to hill;
No sound doth rise but mimic it she will.
Theodore Fay.
29. The sounding Viol;
When eyes with speaking glances,
Kindle high with pleasure,
As rings the well-known strain;
With easy gliding motion,
involved in graceful fancies,
Of light uncertain measure,
Responds the fairy train.
J. G. Percival.
30. Low whisperings in boats,
As they shoot through the moonlight, with drippings
of oars.
Moore.
31. The hunter's shout,
When clanging horns swell their sweet winding notes,
The pack wide-opening on the trembling air
With various melody.
Somerville—The Chace.
32. The sounds awaken'd there
In the Pine leaves fine and small,
Soft and sweetly musical,
By the fingers of the air.
J. G. Whittier.
33. The song of spirits that will sometimes sail
Close to the ear, a deep, delicious stream,
Then sweep away, and die with a low wail.
Croly—Angel of the World.
34. The roar
Of ocean's everlasting surges,
Tumbling upon the beach's hard-beat floor,
Or sliding backward to the shore,
To meet the landward wave, and slowly plunge once more.
J. R. Lowell.
35. The rivulet, which
Sending glad sounds, and tripping o'er its bed
Of pebbly sands, or leaping down the rocks,
Seems, with continuous laughter, to rejoice
In its own being.
W. C. Bryant.
36. A damsel singing to herself
A song of love by snatches; breaking off
If but a flower, an insect on the wing
Please for an instant, then as carelessly
The strain resuming.
Rogers—Italy.
37. The sound of the church-going bell,
When it bursts on the ear with its full, rich swell.
Miss M. Davidson.
38. The brisk, awakening viol,
Whose sweet, entrancing voice you love the best.
Collins.
39. The blackbird's merry chant. Bold plunderer!
How sweet to hear his mellow burst of song
Float from his watch-place on the mossy tree,
Close at the cornfield's edge!
J. McLellan.
40. The sound of music at even-fall,
Filling the heart
With a flow of thought and feeling sweet,
When lips that we love breathe forth the song.
Louisa P. Smith.
41. The harp Eolian;
Faintly at first it begins, scarce heard, and gentle its rising,
Low as the softest breath that passes at summer evening;
Then, as it swells and mounts up, the thrilling melody deepens,
Till a mightier, holier virtue comes with its powerful tone.
Southey.
42. The chirp of birds, blithe voices, lowing kine,
The dash of waters, reed, or rustic pipe,
Blent with the dulcet, distance-mellow'd bell.
Hillhouse.
43. A song of love and jollitye,
To drive away dull melancholy.
Spenser.
44. Preluding low, soft notes that faint and tremble,
Swelling, awakening, dying, plaining deep;
While such sensations in the soul assemble,
As make it pleasant to the eyes to weep.
Mrs. Maria Brooks.
45. Song of maids beneath the moon,
With fairy laughter blent.
W. C. Bryant.
46. To hear the glorious swell
Of chanted psalm and prayer,
And the deep organ's bursting heart
Throb through the shivering air.
J. R. Lowell.
47. A noise like of a hidden brook,
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
Coleridge.
48. Approaching trumpets, that with quavering start,
On the smooth wind come dancing to the heart.
Leigh Hunt—Rimini.
49. A laugh full of life, without any control
But the sweet one of gracefulness, rung from the soul.
Moore—Lalla Rookh.
50. Fifes, cornets, drums,
That rouse the sleepy soul to arms, and bold
Heroic deeds.
Somerville—The Chace.
51. A little song,
Neither sad nor very long.
Barry Cornwall.
52. A voice of music in the rustling leaves,
When the green boughs are hung with living lutes,
Whose strings will only vibrate to His hand
Who made them.
Miss H. F. Gould.
53. The drums beat in the mornin', afore the scriech o' day,
And the wee, wee fifes piped loud and shrill, while yet the morn is gray.
Motherwell.
54. The unseen hawk
Whistling to clouds, and sky-born streams.
Wordsworth.
55. The low, sweet shell,
By whose far music shall thy soul be haunted.
Miss Landon.
56. The trumpet's war-note proud,
The trampling and the hum!
Macaulay.
57. A pattering sound
Of ripen'd acorns, rustling to the ground
Through the crisp, wither'd leaves.
Mrs. Whitman.
58. Birds and brooks from leafy dells,
Chiming forth unwearied canticles.
Wordsworth.
59. When the organ peal, loud rolling, meets
The halleluiahs of the choir; sublime,
A thousand notes symphoniously ascend,
As if the whole were one; suspended high
In air, soaring heavenward, afar they float,
Wafting glad tidings to the sick man's couch.
Grahame—The Sabbath.
60. Tinklings of a vigilant guitar,
Of sleepless lover to a wakeful mistress.
Byron.