I.
There are songs yet unsung, that, though silent, we feel,
As over the soul their faint melodies steal;
Like the spell of enchantment which fairies would weave,
To fetter the victim they mean to deceive.
II.
’Tis vain to resist them: by day and by night
They impart to the soul a deep, quiet delight,
And we feel that their language the sense overpowers,
As the air when oppressed with the perfume of flowers.
III.
When sorrow’s dark shadows come like a death pall,
And the dead leaves of hope by adversity fall,
They come o’er the desert that looms in the heart,
And a newness, a freshness, a verdure impart.
IV.
In the blue purpling waves of the sun-tinted sky,
In the moonbeam, the sunbeam, the vesper’s low sigh,
In the still quiet eve, and the night-wind’s low moan,
Unembodied in words, yet to thought are they known.
V.
In the low languid zephyr that steals through the dell,
With a sweetness and sadness like lovers’ farewell;
In each flower and meadow, each leaflet and brook,
They each add a page to that mystical book.
VI.
O’er each object of nature alike they unfold
A veil of deep mystery ever untold;
For the rose in its modest and calm peaceful rest,
Has infinite secrets enclosed in its breast.
VII.
Can it be that the spirit of genius yet lives,
And to nature this chain of enchantment thus gives;
That the souls of the dead, in this beautiful guise,
Beam out like the light of some love angel’s eyes?
VIII.
Ah, no!—’tis a glory through life’s mist that strays,
Like the dawning of morn through an autumn’s thick haze,
’Tis the light of a glory for ever to shine,
’Tis a something within us—a something divine.