Love's Music by Philip Bourke Marston. Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. 1895. A Victorian Anthology, 1837-1895

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Love’s Music

Philip Bourke Marston (1850–87)


LOVE held a harp between his hands, and, lo!
The master hand, upon the harp-strings laid
By way of prelude, such a sweet tune play’d
As made the heart with happy tears o’er-flow;
Then sad and wild did that strange music grow,	5
And—like the wail of woods by storm gusts sway’d,
While yet the awful thunder’s wrath is stay’d,
And earth lies faint beneath the coming blow,—
Still wilder wax’d the tune; until at length
The strong strings, strain’d by sudden stress and sharp	10
Of that musician’s hand intolerable,
And jarr’d by sweep of unrelenting strength,
Sunder’d, and all the broken music fell.
Such was Love’s music,—lo, the shatter’d harp!