Then join the general chorus of all worlds,

And let the song of charity begin

In strains seraphic, and melodious pray'r.

-- Christopher Smart

from The Religious Poetry,

edited by Marcus Walsh

Let a man be stimulated by poetry,

established by the rules of propriety,

and perfected by music.

-- Confucius

(quoted in Notations,

edited by Sallye Leventhal)

Life's Drum

From the beginning there were drums,

beating out world rhythm --

the booming, never-failing

tide on the beach,

the four seasons,

gliding smoothly, one from the other;

when the birds come,

when they go,

the bear hibernating

for his winter sleep.

Unfathomable the why,

yet all in perfect time

Watch the heartbeat in your wrist

-- a precise pulsing beat

of life's drum.

-- Jimalee Burton (Cherokee)

quoted in In Beauty May I Walk . . . (Exley Pub.)

"Music is almost like the air of higher regions: we breathe it deeply into the lungs of our spirit, and it infuses a more expansive blood into our hidden circulation."

-- Rainer Maria Rilke

from Letters on Life, translated by Ulrich Baer