What if we still ride on, we two,
With life forever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity,—

And heaven just prove that I and she
Ride, ride together, forever ride?

A TOCCATA OF GALUPPI'S

Он Galuppi, Baldassare, this is very sad to find!

I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; But although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind!

Here you come with your old music, and here's all the good it brings.

What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the kings,

Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?

Ay, because the sea's the street there; and 'tis arched by what you call

Shylock's bridge with houses on it, where they kept the carnival:

I was never out of England-it's as if I saw it all.

Did young people take their pleasure when the sea was warm in May?

Balls and masks begun at midnight, burning ever to mid-day, When they made up fresh adventures for the morrow, do you say?

Was a lady such a lady, cheeks so round and lips so red,On her neck the small face buoyant, like a bell-flower on its

bed,

O'er the breast's superb abundance where a man might base his head?

Well, and it was graceful of them-they'd break talk off and afford

-She, to bite her mask's black velvet-he, to finger on his sword,

While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord?

What? Those lesser thirds so plaintive, sixths diminished, sigh on sigh,

Told them something? Those suspensions, those solutions"Must we die?"

Those commiserating sevenths—“Life might last! we can but try!"

"Were you happy?"-"Yes.' -“And are you still as happy?" "Yes. And you?"

-“Then, more kisses!"-"Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?"

Hark, the dominant's persistence till it must be answered to!

So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say!

"Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!

I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!"

Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by

one,

Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone,

Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the

sun.

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor

swerve,

While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I creep through every

nerve.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:

"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Ven

ice earned.

The soul, doubtless, is immortal—where a soul can be discerned.

"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology, Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree; Butterflies may dread extinction,—you'll not die, it cannot be!

"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop, Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:

What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.

Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold

Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

ABT VOGLER

(AFTER HE HAS BEEN EXTEMPORIZING

UPON THE MUSICAL

INSTRUMENT OF HIS INVENTION)

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 disport 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— Outlined 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 has 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 through 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 per

fect too.

All through my keys that gave their sounds to a wish of my soul,

All through my soul that praised as its wish flowed visibly forth,

All through 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!