Slowly, Silently, Now The Moon Walks The

When Music Sounds, Gone Is The Earth I Know, And All Her Lovelier Things Even Lovelier Grow; Her Flowers In Vision Flame, Her Forest Trees Lift Burdened Branches, Stilled With Ecstasies. When Music Sounds, Out Of The Water Rise Naiads Whose Beauty Dims My Waking Eyes, Rapt In Strange Dream Burns Each Enchanted Face, With Solemn Echoing Stirs Their Dwelling-place. When Music Sounds, All That I Was I Am Ere To This Haunt Of Brooding Dust I Came; And From Time's Woods Break Into Distant Song The Swift-winged Hours, As I Hasten Along.

The Sandy Cat By The Farmer's Chair Mews At His Knee For Dainty Fare; Old Rover In His Moss-greened House Mumbles A Bone, And Barks At A Mouse. In The Dewy Fields The Cattle Lie Chewing The Cud 'neath A Fading Sky; Dobbin At Manger Pulls His Hay: Gone Is Another Summer's Day.

Without Imagination Of The One Kind Or Of The Other, Mortal Existence Is Indeed A Dreary And Prosaic Business... Illumined By The Imagination, Our Life, Whatever Its Defeats - Is A Never-ending Unforeseen Strangeness And Adventure And Mystery.

For Beauty With Sorrow Is A Burden Hard To Be Borne: The Evening Light On The Foam, And The Swans, There; That Music, Remote, Forlorn.

After All, What Is Every Man? A Horde Of Ghosts - Like A Chinese Nest Of Boxes - Oaks That Were Acorns That Were Oaks. Death Lies Behind Us, Not In Front - In Our Ancestors, Back And Back Until.