274 GREAT MUSIC IN POETRY 



apart when at their greatest; nevertheless their 

 relationship is sometimes suggested in great poetry, 

 though never in music. This is only in poetry in 

 which the thought, however lofty, is felt and expressed 

 with passion — when thought and passion are welded 

 into one. Thus, in Shelley's Hymn to Intellectual 

 Beauty and his Ode to the West Wind there is a great 

 thought, but it has fused in the heat of the poet's 

 passion and made one with the passion, and is like 

 a flame within a flame. 



A most perfect example from the older poets is 

 Vaughan's They are all gone into a world of light. 

 Some of Keats's poems also produce the effect of 

 music, albeit the passion is less than in Shelley or 

 Vaughan. One may also find it in Swinburne's 

 Itylus. Byron has one lyric which might be included 

 in this category — snatched away in heauty^s bloom. 

 Two or three of Cowper's shorter poems and two or 

 three lyrics by Blake have this quality ; it also appears 

 in a few of Emily Bronte's somewhat crude verses 

 such as The Linnet in the rocky dell, and one or two 

 others. One may be found even in E. B. Browning 

 — the only one I can re-read — the message to 

 Camoens in his absence from his dying wife. There 

 are far more perfect examples in Edgar Allan Poe, 

 in Ulalume, For Annie and Annabel Lee for example. 

 Also two or three lyrics in Tennyson, the best being 

 Tears, idle tears, and Crossing the Bar. 



It seems incredible that any of these poems, 

 and others which produce a like effect, should have 

 tempted any composer to "set the words to music." 



