Perplexed Music
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Experience, like a pale musician, holds
A dulcimer of patience in his hand:
Whence harmonies we cannot understand,
Of God's will in His worlds, the strain unfolds
In sad, perplexed minors. Deathly colds
Fall on us while we hear and countermand
Our sanguine heart back from the fancy-land,
With nightingales in visionary wolds.
We murmur, -- Where is any certain tune
--
Or measured music, in such notes as these?
But angels, leaning from the golden seat,
Are not so minded: their fine ear hath won
The issue of completed cadences;
And, smiling down the stars, they whisper -- Sweet.
Source Book
The Poems Of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume 1
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Copyright 1853
Published by C. S. Francis & Co., 262 Broadway, New York
Crosby & Nichols, Boston
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