Perplexed Music

Perplexed Music

EXPERIENCE, like a pale musician, holds

A dulcimer of patience in his hand,

Whence harmonies, we cannot understand,

Of God; 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 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.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning