A Puritan, as you would know,

Is an agonizing man,

That someone, somewhere may happy be,

Despite our “fallen” pain.

 

The Puritan’s is a tone-deaf god

Who frowns at symphony,

For a music-loving sapien is

Someone who more than a sinner be.

 

“from harmony,” a pious poet wrote,

“this universal frame began”;

His god clearly was no boor,

But an ecstatic musician.

 

If there be gods who music fear

They are terrified souls,

Askance at human splendour,

Born of a God who music knows.

 

“Sweet sounds, O beautiful music, do not cease,

Reject me not into the world again;

With you alone is excellence and peace,

Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain”

 

Wrote Edna St. Vincent Millay—

A woman who creation understood;

So let us leave the Puritans,

And find in music the supreme good.

 

For the true God is a Conductor

Who brings into unity

Sounds of discrete pitch and note

Into uplifting harmony.

---