At a Solemn Musick



Let the musicians begin,


Let every instrument awaken and instruct us

In love’s willing river and love’s dear discipline:

We wait, silent, in consent and in the penance

Of patience, awaiting the serene exaltation

Which is the liberation and conclusion of expiation.





Now may the chief musician say:

“Lust and emulation have dwelt amoung us

Like barbarous kings: have conquered us:

Have inhabited our hearts: devoured and ravished

—With the savage greed and avarice of fire—

The substance of pity and compassion.”





Now may all the players play:

“The river of the morning, the morning of the river

Flow out of the splendor of the tenderness of surrender.”

Now may the chief musician say:

“Nothing is more important than summer.”





And now the entire choir shall chant:

“How often the astonished heart,

Beholding the laurel,

Remembers the dead,

And the enchanted absolute,

Snow’s kingdom, sleep’s dominion.”





Then shall the chief musician declare:

“The phoenix is the meaning of the fruit,

Until the dream is knowledge and knowledge is a dream.”





And then, once again, the entire choir shall cry, in passionate unity,

Singing and celebrating love and love’s victory,

Ascending and descending the heights of assent, climbing and chanting triumphantly:

Before the morning was, you were:

Before the snow shone,

And the light sang, and the stone,

Abiding, rode the fullness or endured the emptiness,

You were: you were alone.




Delmore Schwartz