g, some with deeds as well undone,
Death stepped tacitly, and took them where they never see the sun.

11.

But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve,
While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's close reserve,
In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve.

--
St. 11. While I triumph o'er a secret wrung from nature's
close reserve: the secret of the soul's immortality.

12.

Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned:
"Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned.
The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned.

13.

"Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology,
Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree;
Butterflies may dread extinction,--you'll not die, it cannot be!

--
St. 13. The idea is involved in this stanza that the soul's
continued existence is dependent on its development in this life;
the ironic character of the stanza is indicated by the merely
intellectual subjects named, physics, geology, mathematics,
which do not of themselves, necessarily, contribute to
SOUL-development. All from the 2d verse of the 12th stanza
down to "Dust and ashes" in the 15th, is what the music,
"like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned",
says to the speaker, in the monologue, of the men and women for whom
life meant simply a butterfly enjoyment.

14.

"As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop,
Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop:
What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop?

15.

"Dust and ashes!" So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold.
Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what's become of all the gold
Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old.

Abt Vogler.

(After he has been extemporizing upon the Musical Instrument
of his Invention.)

1.

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly,--alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,--
Should rush into sight