moved men, however little refined they may be, and however wrong are the means that she has employed.
If we turn from Eliza Cook to another popular poetess, Adelaide Anne Procter, we shall note a difference. A Lost Chord is the poetry of no imagination; its sentiment, nebulously ecstatic, is addressed to no definite audience:
Seated one day at the Organ,
I was weary and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.
I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then;
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.
It flooded the crimson twilight
Like the close of an Angel's Psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.
It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.
It linked all perplexed meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence
As if it were loth to cease.
I have sought, but I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
Which came from the soul of the Organ,
And entered into mine.
It may be that Death's bright angel
Will speak in that chord again,
It may be that only in Heaven
I shall hear that grand Amen.
The windy words have no purpose; they are as dead as Frank Dicksee's St. Cecilia. But they may have at least this use: they may bring us to the point. What is it which
