Littell's Living Age/Volume 144/Issue 1865/Æolian

by F. W. B.

Æolian

     His soul is tuned to subtler harmonies
Than our dull music; never mortal touch
Woke such wild sweetness from the well-tuned harp;
Nor mortal touch from him can draw his best.
     Ah! set him in the woodlands, or where lakes
Lend heaven a mirror for its thousand eyes,
Or where the ocean evermore complains
In lonely grandeur of its loneliness.
These rouse him to full rapture, and he breaks
Into the sweetness of an angel’s song
Who wakes on earth, new-fall’n in sleep from heaven.
     So the Æolian harp owns not the sway
Of harper’s fingers; not the ordered laws
Of fugue, sonata, symphony; yet breathes
Its whole full heart forth to the lawless wind.