Explore "The Strange Music" by G.K. Chesterton on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may loose and slack, / But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon his back, / Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger and I fret, / Still, my hope is all before me: for I cannot play it yet.
In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath ere let fall, / In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not known at all; / Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as your frame, / Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than your sorrow's name.
Not as mine, my soul's anointed, not as mine the rude and light / Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song and fight; / Something stranger, something sweeter, something waiting you afar, / Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows are.
But on this, God's harp supernal, stretched but to be stricken once.
Hoary Time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a dunce.
But I will not fear to match them -- no, by God, I will not fear, / I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand still to hear.