I NEED MUSIC PEOMS ABOUT ALL TYPES OF MUSIC PLEASE!!

Use the SEARCH function on this forum to look for PIANO -- someone made quite a collection of poems about pianos.

Also try going to www.bartleby.com. That's a huge, searchable archive of classic poetry. Click on the VERSE tab, then search for words like music, melody, song, violin, etc. You'll be amazed at the variety of eras and styles and "tones" you find.

Here's one for free: The phrase "the sound of music" is from Shakespeare. Specifically, it's from a romantic scene in THE MERCHANT OF VENICE. You can probably use that, too.

A Musical Instrument by Elizabeth Barratt Browning is one about Pan pipes, if you want a change from pianos.

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

by: Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lillies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river;
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flow'd the river;
And hack'd and hew'd as a great god can
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan
(How tall it stood in the river!),
Then drew the pitch, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notch'd the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.

'This is the way,' laugh'd the great god Pan
(Laugh'd while he sat by the river),
'The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
Then dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in the power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain--
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds of the river.



Post Edited (11-18-04 15:24)

Here are the words to "Alexander's Ragtime Band," a famous song written in 1911 by Irving Berlin:

Oh, ma honey, oh, ma honey,
Better hurry and let's meander
Ain't you goin', ain't you goin',
To the leader man,
Ragged meter man?
Oh, ma honey, oh, ma honey,
Let me take you to alexander's
Grand stand, brass band,
Ain't you comin' along?

Oh, ma honey, oh, ma honey
There's a fiddle with notes that screeches,
Like a chicken, like a chicken
And the clarinet
Is a colored pet,
Come and listen, come and listen,
To a classical band what's peaches,
Come now, somehow,
Better hurry along.

Refrain:
|: Come on and hear, :|
Alexander's Ragtime Band,
|: Come on and hear, :|
It's the best band in the land!
They can play a bugle call
Like you never heard before,
So natural that you want to go to war
That's just the bestest band what am,
Honey Lamb!
|: Come on along, :|
Let me take you by the hand
|: Up to the man, :|
Who's the leader of the band,
And if you want to hear
The Swanee River played in ragtime
|: Come on and hear, :|
Alexander's Ragtime Band

To his Friend Master R. L., In Praise of Music and Poetry
by Richard Barnfield

If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs (the sister and the brother),
Then must the love be great 'twixt thee and me,
Because thou lov'st the one, and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such
As, passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Ph{oe}bus' lute (the queen of music), makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drown'd
Whenas himself to singing he betakes.
One god is god of both (as poets feign),
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

Les

Here are a couple by Robert Herrick:

TO MUSIC, TO BECALM A SWEET SICK YOUTH
by Robert Herrick

Charms, that call down the moon from out her sphere,
On this sick youth work your enchantments here!
Bind up his senses with your numbers, so
As to entrance his pain, or cure his woe.
Fall gently, gently, and a-while him keep
Lost in the civil wilderness of sleep:
That done, then let him, dispossess'd of pain,
Like to a slumbering bride, awake again.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


TO MUSIC: A SONG
by Robert Herrick

Music, thou queen of heaven, care-charming spell,
That strik'st a stillness into hell;
Thou that tam'st tigers, and fierce storms, that rise,
With thy soul-melting lullabies;
Fall down, down, down, from those thy chiming spheres
To charm our souls, as thou enchant'st our ears.

Musicks Empire
by Andrew Marvell

First was the World as one great Cymbal made,
Where Jarring Windes to infant Nature plaid.
All Musick was a solitary sound,
To hollow Rocks and murm'ring Fountains bound.

Jubal first made the wilder Notes agree;
And Jubal tun'd Musicks Jubilee:
He call'd the Ecchoes from their sullen Cell,
And built the Organs City where they dwell.

Each sought a consort in that lovely place;
And Virgin Trebles wed the manly Base.
From whence the Progeny of numbers new
Into harmonious Colonies withdrew.

Some to the Lute, some to the Viol went,
And others chose the Cornet eloquent.
These practising the Wind, and those the Wire,
To sing Mens Triumphs, or in Heavens quire.

Then Musick, the Mosaique of the Air,
Did of all these a Solemn noise prepare:
With which She gain'd the Empire of the Ear,
Including all between the Earth and Sphear.

Victorious Sounds. yet here your Homage do
Unto a gentler Conqueror then you;
Who though He flies the Musick of his praise,
Would with you Heavens Hallelujahs raise.

Music in the Bush
by Robert W. Service

O'er the dark pines she sees the silver moon,
And in the west, all tremulous, a star;
And soothing sweet she hears the mellow tune
Of cow-bells jangled in the fields afar.

Quite listless, for her daily stent is done,
She stands, sad exile, at her rose-wreathed door,
And sends her love eternal with the sun
That goes to gild the land she'll see no more.

The grave, gaunt pines imprison her sad gaze,
All still the sky and darkling drearily;
She feels the chilly breath of dear, dead days
Come sifting through the alders eerily.

Oh, how the roses riot in their bloom!
The curtains stir as with an ancient pain;
Her old piano gleams from out the gloom
And waits and waits her tender touch in vain.

But now her hands like moonlight brush the keys
With velvet grace -- melodious delight;
And now a sad refrain from over seas
Goes sobbing on the bosom of the night;

And now she sings. (O! singer in the gloom,
Voicing a sorrow we can ne'er express,
Here in the Farness where we few have room
Unshamed to show our love and tenderness,

Our hearts will echo, till they beat no more,
That song of sadness and of motherland;
And, stretched in deathless love to England's shore,
Some day she'll hearken and she'll understand.)

A prima-donna in the shining past,
But now a mother growing old and gray,
She thinks of how she held a people fast
In thrall, and gleaned the triumphs of a day.

She sees a sea of faces like a dream;
She sees herself a queen of song once more;
She sees lips part in rapture, eyes agleam;
She sings as never once she sang before.

She sings a wild, sweet song that throbs with pain,
The added pain of life that transcends art --
A song of home, a deep, celestial strain,
The glorious swan-song of a dying heart.

A lame tramp comes along the railway track,
A grizzled dog whose day is nearly done;
He passes, pauses, then comes slowly back
And listens there -- an audience of one.

She sings -- her golden voice is passion-fraught,
As when she charmed a thousand eager ears;
He listens trembling, and she knows it not,
And down his hollow cheeks roll bitter tears.

She ceases and is still, as if to pray;
There is no sound, the stars are all alight --
Only a wretch who stumbles on his way,
Only a vagrant sobbing in the night.

Thanks, Less. I find this one interesting because of the (old) who was really Shakespeare controversy.

[www.pe.net] />
The site above also mentions As It Fell Upon A Day, another one previously discussed here on eMule, comparing one by Barnfield and/or Shakespeare to Lewis Carroll.

[www.readbookonline.net] />
[www.englishverse.com] />
[www.4literature.net] />
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Yeah, Miching Mallecho is another Shakespeare reference, too.

[www.bartleby.com]

"Free Thoughts on Several Eminent Composers" by Charles Lamb