| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 143. The Monochord |
| By Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) |
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| IS it the moved air or the moving sound | |
| That is Life’s self and draws my life from me, | |
| And by instinct ineffable decree | |
| Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound? | |
| Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crowned, | 5 |
| That ’mid the tide of all emergency | |
| Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea | |
| Its difficult eddies labour in the ground? | |
| |
| Oh! what is this that knows the road I came, | |
| The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame, | 10 |
| The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?— | |
| That draws round me at last this wind-warm space, | |
| And in regenerate rapture turns my face | |
| Upon the devious coverts of dismay? | |
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