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Rh A festival song,

The duet of the bridegroom and the bride, a marriage-march,

With lips of love, and hearts of lovers fill'd to the brim with love,

The red-flush'd cheeks and perfumes, the cortege swarming full of friendly faces young and old.

To flutes' clear notes and sounding harps' cantabile.

Now loud approaching drums,

Victoria! see'st thou in powder-smoke the banners torn but flying? the rout of the baffled?

Hearest those shouts of a conquering army?

(Ah soul, the sobs of women, the wounded groaning in agony,

The hiss and crackle of flames, the blacken'd ruins, the embers of cities,

The dirge and desolation of mankind.)

Now airs antique and mediæval fill me,

I see and hear old harpers with their harps at Welsh festivals,

I hear the minnesingers singing their lays of love,

I hear the minstrels, gleemen, troubadours, of the middle ages.

Now the great organ sounds,

Tremulous, while underneath, (as the hid footholds of the earth,

On which arising rest, and leaping forth depend,

All shapes of beauty, grace and strength, all hues we know

Green blades of grass and warbling birds, children that gambol and play, the clouds of heaven above,)

The strong base stands, and its pulsations intermits not,

Bathing, supporting, merging all the rest, maternity of all the rest,

And with it every instrument in multitudes,

The players playing, all the world's musicians,

The solemn hymns and masses rousing adoration,

All passionate heart-chants, sorrowful appeals,

The measureless sweet vocalists of ages,

And for their solvent setting earth's own diapason,

Of winds and woods and mighty ocean waves,

A new composite orchestra, binder of years and climes, ten-fold renewer,

As of the far-back days the poets tell, the Paradiso,

The straying thence, the separation long, but now the wandering done,

The journey done, the journeyman come home,

And man and art with Nature fused again.