National Poetry of Month, 19 of 30

Stanzas for Music
By Lord Byron (George Gordon)

   There be none of Beauty’s daughters
       With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
       Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean’s pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull’d winds seem dreaming:

   And the midnight moon is weaving
       Her bright chain o’er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
       As an infant’s asleep:
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer’s ocean.

Lord Byron (of the sobriquet, “Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know”) has many connections to music. His Don Juan joins Mozart’s as one of the great settings of the story. And Childe Harold inspired, among other things, Berlioz’ Harold in Italy.