The Eternity of Music

In tracing of unnumbered years
They traverse time unknown
Someone pauses, faintly hears
A singing sweet, now gone

Straining far to hear the sound
Of song-wisps drifting by
Tenderly twirling and turning around
With fingers that fade and fly

O Music! Delight of our soul and living!
From whence you came far away
Make my life full and for giving
Be here, I cannot stay

The echoes of past I bare recall
Resounds through time and space
Each step laid down, with each footfall
Upon each point and place

The music I hear, and now I make
It passes beat by beat
Note by note shall soon awake
Its counterpoint shall meet

Blended into musical time
Unspeakable beauty to name
All thoughts transcend, and all sublime
Returning to whence it came

Within the heart of music true
Are infinite wonders to bear
The start from which it will ensue
The end to bring it there

The end is but the start of all
The start the start of the end
The starting notes are yet the call
The late notes are to send

In living, in giving, in all life receiving
Each person plays part of a song
In singing, in sounding, in music believing
Each moment its part to belong

He beckons with an open hand
Sweetly his song is sung
In words that none can understand
Nor hear from his own tongue

Pouring forth from deep to deep
In sounds both light and bright
Melody notes that leap and leap
In depths from height to height

Sounding and resounding more
Reverb’rates eternally long
The words to sing were sung before
More singing infinity’s song

The cosmos far its edge to reach
There time may run its end
All our knowing, all our speech
Around us comes to bend

Infinite depths we yet can sound
Eternity no limit knows
The world his music makes it round
Endlessly song echoes

Once the music had been sung
Across ten thousand years
In faintest strains o’er us is hung
Soft melody sounds he hears

Strain we may to hear each word
Transcending space and time
None by him are left unheard
All perfect in rhythm and rhyme