But
as she sang, I could not help stealing up to the piano; and, feasting my
greedy eyes with every motion of those delicious lips, listen and listen,
entranced, and living only in that melody.
Suddenly, after singing two or three songs, she began fingering the keys,
and struck into an old air, wild and plaintive, rising and falling like the
swell of an AEolian harp upon a distant breeze.
"Ah! now," she said, "if I could get words for that! What an exquisite
lament somebody might write to it, if they could only thoroughly take in
the feeling and meaning of it."
"Perhaps," I said, humbly, "that is the only way to write songs--to let
some air get possession of ones whole soul, and gradually inspire the words
for itself; as the old Hebrew prophets had music played before them, to
wake up the prophetic spirit within them."
She looked up, just as if she had been unconscious of my presence till that
moment.
"Ah! Mr. Locke!--well, if you understand my meaning so thoroughly, perhaps
you will try and write some words for me."
"I am afraid that I do not enter sufficiently into the meaning of the air.
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