Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/313

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Poems That Every Child Should Know
275

The God of Music.

"The God of Music," by Edith M. Thomas, an Ohio poetess now living. In this sonnet the poetess has touched the power of Wordsworth or Keats and placed herself among the immortals.

The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.
All seasons through his minstrelsy we meet,
Breathing by field and covert haunting-sweet
From organ-lofts in forests old he pours:
A solemn harmony: on leafy floors
To smooth autumnal pipes he moves his feet,
Or with the tingling plectrum of the sleet
In winter keen beats out his thrilling scores.
Leave me the reed unplucked beside the stream,
And he will stoop and fill it with the breeze;
Leave me the viol's frame in secret trees,
Unwrought, and it shall wake a druid theme;
Leave me the whispering shell on Nereid shores.
The God of Music dwelleth out of doors.

Edith M. Thomas.


A Musical Instrument.

"A Musical Instrument" (by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-61). This poem is the supreme masterpiece of Mrs. Browning. The prime thought in it is the sacrifice and pain that must go to make a poet or any genius.

"The great god sighed for the cost and the pain."

What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat.
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.