Perplexed Music

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

    AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO E. J.


    Experience, like a pale musician, holds
    A dulcimer of patience in his hand,
    Whence harmonies, we cannot understand,
    Of God; will in his worlds, the strain unfolds
    In sad-perplexed minors: deathly colds
    Fall on us while we hear, and countermand
    Our sanguine heart back from the fancyland
    With nightingales in visionary worlds.
    We murmur' Where is any certain tune
    Or measured music in such notes as these?'
    But angels, leaning from the golden seat,
    Are not so minded their fine ear hath won
    The issue of completed cadences,
    And, smiling down the stars, they whisper sweet.