By D.G. ROSSETTI

What is the music of these flower-crowned strings?
Nay, what is the music of this love-crowned soul?
Unto which listening in rapture with their wings

Folded to silence angels, see, stay their flight,
While only one small bird's fluttering thrills through the whole
Harmonious wonder of scent and sound and sight.

What is this music? Of fate that thwarts and kills?
Of thought that forbodes? Of life that is weary? Of death
That must come i' the end? Of love whose passion fulfils

The unuttered unutterable moments of life, till thought,
Till fate, life, death are as nothing? — Answereth
Each one to himself as each one's spirit is wrought.

And for me on whose lonely and longing spirit there rests
This vision of youth's utter beauty through days and nights
That mock with their light and darkness the impotent guests

Of a dominant amorous madness — for me let her say,
This glorious lady, this mistress of all delights, —
" Gaze on me in vision, till I come even to thee one day. "