That way look, my Infant, lo! What a pretty baby-show! See the Kitten on the wall, Sporting with the leaves that fall, Withered leaves—one—two—and three— From the lofty elder-tree! Through the calm and frosty air Of this morning bright and fair, Eddying round and round they sink Softly, slowly: one might think, From the motions that are made, Every little leaf conveyed Sylph or Faery hither tending,— To this lower world descending, Each invisible and mute, In his wavering parachute. ——But the Kitten, how she starts, Crouches, stretches, paws, and darts! First at one, and then its fellow Just ...

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When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on ...

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"All deep things are song.  It seems somehow the very central essence of us, song; as if all the rest were but wrappages and hulls!" - Thomas Carlyle "If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music." - Gustav Mahler "Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it." - Henry David Thoreau ...

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