Poetry day - Perplexed Music
And now, having given you that much, I will post the hopeful rest.
Perplexed Music
-by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
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 fancyland
With nightingale in visionary wolds.
We murmer ‘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.