The Poetry Of Music

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

‘If music be the food of love play on.’ The evocative words of William Shakespeare not only capture the addictive quality of love but also of music. Poets have an ability with their words and phrases to provide a rhythm, an atmosphere. When this is allied to their musings on music we are captivated. This collection of poems on or about music captured by our greatest poets really is music to the ears.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Copyright Group
• Release date: Jan 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781783948178

Book preview

THE POETRY OF MUSIC

‘If music be the food of love play on.’  The evocative words of William Shakespeare not only capture the addictive quality of love but also of music. 

Poets have an ability with their words and phrases to provide a rhythm, an atmosphere.  When this is allied to their musings on music we are captivated.

This collection of poems on or about music captured by our greatest poets really is music to the ears.

Many of these poems have been recorded by our sister company, Portable Poetry, and is available as an audiobook from iTunes, Amazon and other fine digital stores.

Index Of Poems

If Music Be The Food Of Love (Twelfth Night) – William Shakespeare

A Musical Instrument – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Piano – DH Lawrence

At a Solemn Music – John Milton

Music, When Soft Voices Die – Percy Bysshe Shelley

Music – Wilfred Owen

To Music – Rainer Maria Rilke

Alexander's Feast; Or, The Power Of Music – John Dryden

Better—than Music! For I—who heard it – Emily Dickinson

Split the Lark—and you'll find the Music – Emily Dickinson

Away With Funeral Music – Robert Louis Stevenson

On Music – Thomas Moore

Stanzas For Music: There's Not A Joy The World Can Give – Lord Byron

Perplexed Music – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Musicians – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Song and Music – Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Music on Christmas Morning – Anne Bronte

Italian Music In Dakota – Walt Whitman

That Music Always Round Me – Walt Whitman

Written for a Musician – Vachal Lindsay

Sonnet 8: Music To Hear, Why Hear'st Thou Music Sadly? – William Shakespeare

The Strange Music – GK Chesterton

Sing - Sing - Music Was Given – Thomas Moore

To Music, To Becalm His Fever – Robert Herrick

To Music: A Song – Robert Herrick

Music At The Villa Marina – Robert Louis Stevenson

For Music – Lord Byron

War-Music – Henry Van Dyke

The Passions. An Ode to Music – William Taylor Collins

Music In The Flat – Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Master of Music – Henry Van Dyke

Rain Music – Joseph Seamon Cotter

Young Laughters, and My Music! – Augusta Davies Webster

To the Chief Musician upon Nabla: A Tyndallic Ode – James Clerk Maxwell

Music: An Ode – Algernon Charles Swinburne

Sonnet 128: How Oft, When Thou, My Music, Music Play'st – William Shakespeare

Music's Empire – Andrew Marvell

A Musician's Trial – John Bannister Tabb

My Lute Awake – Sir Thomas Wyatt

A Song – William Blake

The Voice - Matthew Arnold

Prophets Who Cannot Sing – Coventry Patmore

A Peal Of Bells – Christina Georgina Rossetti

Church Music – George Herbert

Celia, Sleeping or Singing - Thomas Stanley

Celia Singing - Thomas Carew

The Eolian Harp – Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Vulcan’s Song - John Lyly

When to Her Lute Corinna Sings- Thomas Campion

Hymn I, Of Astraea - Sir John Davies (from Hymns of Astraea)

Music – William Ernest Henley

The Nightingale Has A Lyre Of Gold – William Ernest Henley

With A Guitar, To Jane – Percy Bysshe Shelley

IX: Song: To Celia – Ben Jonson

Power Of Music – William Wordsworth

The Solitary Reaper – William Wordsworth

The Dying Swan - Alfred Lord Tennyson

Music – William Bell Scott

Abt Vogler – Robert Browning

The Three Musicians (first version) - Aubrey Beardsley

The Three Musicians (published version) - Aubrey Beardsley

Hymn to God, My God, in My Sickness – John Donne

Music I Heard -  Conrad Aiken

Music - Stephen Vincent Benet

Musicians Wrestle Everywhere - Emily Dickinson

Written For A Musician - Vachel Lindsay

The Red Lacquer Music-Stand - Amy Lowell

Music - Charles Baudelaire

If Music Be The Food Of Love (Twelfth Night) - William Shakespeare

If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! it had a dying fall:

O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound,

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:

'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.

O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,

That, notwithstanding thy capacity

Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,

Of what validity and pitch soe'er,

But falls into abatement and low price,

Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy

That it alone is high fantastical.

A Musical Instrument – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

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.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,

From the deep cool bed of the river:

The limpid water turbidly ran,

And the broken lilies a-dying lay,

And the dragon-fly had