These melodious poems celebrate the enchanting power of music to move hearts and souls. They explore the magic of melodies, rhythms, and harmonies that evoke emotions and ignite the imagination.
These poems often honor the universal language of music that transcends cultural boundaries, inspiring unity and joy. Poets use metaphors of music as a conductor of emotions, carrying listeners on a transformative journey.
These poems often remind readers of music’s profound impact on human expression and connection.
‘I Am In Need of Music’ by Elizabeth Bishop describes the desire a speaker has to be held, calmed down and consumed by the music she loves.
I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling fingertips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’ by Robert Browning retells the story of the Pied Piper with engaging details and a playful tone.
Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
‘The Victor Dog’ by James Merrill humorously explores the listener’s perspective, imagining them as the attentive dog on the Victor label.
Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez.
The little white dog on the Victor label
Listens long and hard as he is able.
It’s all in a day’s work, whatever plays.
‘The Machinist, Teaching His Daughter to Play the Piano’ by B.H. Fairchild is a free verse poem about how the creative process can connect a father and daughter.
The brown wrist and hand with its raw knuckles and blue nails
packed with dirt and oil, pause in mid-air,
the fingers arched delicately,
‘The Myth of Music’ by Rachel M. Harper describes the mythical power of music and its ability convey one’s generational and familial relationships.
If music can be passed on
like brown eyes or a strong
left hook, this melody
is my inheritance, lineage traced
‘Musician’ by Gillian Clarke is a poem about her son learning to play the piano, where the imagery around the home aids to describe the creativity of music.
His carpet splattered like a Jackson Pollock
with clothes, books, instruments, the NME,
he strummed all day, read Beethoven sonatas.
He could hear it, he said, 'like words.'
‘The Guitar’ is a melancholy exploration of the power of music and its relationship to our experience of the world around us.
The weeping of the guitar
begins.
The goblets of dawn
are smashed.
‘That Music Always Round Me’ by Walt Whitman is a beautiful poem that melds together the poet’s democratic worldview with a rapt appreciation for individual beauty.
That music always round me, unceasing, unbeginning, yet long untaught I did not hear,
But now the chorus I hear and am elated,
Buchwald’s ‘My Mother’s Music’ evokes childhood nostalgia, blending serene piano melodies with the flowing beauty of water imagery.
In the evenings of my childhood, when I went to bed, music washed into the cove of my room, my door open to a slice of light.
‘One Word Is Too Often Profaned’ laments the dilution of “love,” offering a profound worship likened to a moth’s yearning for a star.
One word is too often profaned
For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
For thee to disdain it;
‘Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?’ is Sonnet 8 in the series of 154 sonnets that Shakespeare wrote during his lifetime. It belongs to the Fair Youth sequence.
Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy:
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?
Jessica Traynor’s ‘The Artane Band’ explores complex themes of silence and oppression in recent Irish history.
Da used to swing me over the turnstile,
to see the Dublin matches. I remember
the sight of my own legs, dangling.
‘At that hour when all things have repose’ by James Joyce is a lyrical poem that explores themes of lovelorn solitude and the sublime beauty of music.
At that hour when all things have repose,
O lonely watcher of the skies,
Do you hear the night wind and the sighs
Of harps playing unto Love to unclose
‘Music’ by Walter de la Mare is a passionate poem about the transcendent effects of music upon the world around us.
When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.
‘Latin & Soul’ by Victor Hernández Cruz conveys the power of music sublimely affecting a group of dancers.
some waves
a wave of now
a trombone speaking to you
a piano is trying to break a molecule
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