. . . Oh! the heart
Makes its own happiness, perchance the best,
When consecrate to one engrossing love !

—music's power
Is little felt in sunlit hour;
But hear its voice when hopes depart,
Like swallows, flying from the heart
On which the summer's late decline
Has set a sadness and a sign;. . . . . .
How deeply will the spirit feel
The lute, the song's sweet-voiced appeal;
And how the heart drink in their sighs
As echoes they from Paradise.

Mysterious enthusiasm, Love !
The heart's supremest power;—which doth combine
Within itself religion, poetry,
And heroism.

How sad, a heart that
does not know how to love, that
does not know what it is to be drunk with love.
If you are not in love, how can you enjoy
the blinding light of the sun,
the soft light of the moon?

Music moves us, and we know not why;
We feel the tears, but cannot trace their source.
Is it the language of some other state,
Born of its memory ? For what can wake
The soul's strong instinct of another world,
Like music?

"Music is the heart of life." She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful."

The heart has reasons that reason cannot know.

The heart knows no boundaries; it knows only the language of love.

The heart hath its mystery, and who may reveal it,
Or who ever read in the depths of their own? —
How much, we never may speak of, yet feel it,
But, even in feeling it, know it unknown!

Who could refrain,
That had a heart to love, and in that heart
Courage to make love known?

The soul of music slumbers in the shell
Till waked and kindled by the master's spell;
And feeling hearts, touch them but rightly, pour
A thousand melodies unheard before!

...the sole test of music is its power to exalt the soul.

listening to music renews the heart precisely for this reason: it plumbs the gravity of sorrow until it finds the point of submerged light and lightness. Listening to music stirs the heavy heart; it alters the gravity. Unconsciously it schools us in a different way to hold sorrow. When the music is dark it works through dissonance and harsh notes; like underpainting their beauty is slow to reveal itself but it does ultimately dawn. It frees a space to let in lightness. Unlike anything else in the world, music is neither image nor word and yet it can say and show more than a painting or poem.

How light the touches are that kiss
The music from the chords of life!