For brainless plaudits basely jest away?

What gives him power to move all hearts,

Each stubborn element to sway,

What but the harmony, his being’s inmost tone,

That charms all feelings back into his own?

Where listless Nature, her eternal thread,

The unwilling spindle twists around,

And hostile shocks of things that will not wed

With jarring dissonance resound,

Who guides with living pulse the rhythmic flow

Of powers that make sweet music as they go?

Who consecrates each separate limb and soul

To beat in glorious concert with the whole?

Who makes the surgy-swelling billow

Heave with the wildly heaving breast,

And on the evening’s rosy pillow,

Invites the brooding heart to rest?

Who scatters spring’s most lovely blooms upon

The path of the belovèd one?

Who plaits the leaves that unregarded grow

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