Littell's Living Age/Volume 160/Issue 2069/Schubert's Symphony in B Minor

by H. Havelock Ellis

I shudder at the awful airs that flow
     Across my soul; I hear crushed hopes that wail
     And flutter their brief wings and sudden fail —
Wild tender cries that sing and dance and go
In wonderful sweet troops. I cannot know
     What rends within my soul what unseen veil,
     And tells anew what strangely well-known tale
Of infinite gladness and of infinite woe.

Was I long since thrust forth from Heaven's door,
     Where in that music I had borne my part?
Or had this symphony its birth before
     The pulse of nature turned to laws of art?
O what familiar voice, from what far shore,
     Calls to a voice that answers in my heart!