A Lost Chord
Adelaide Anne
Procter
Procter, Adelaide Anne
A. A. P.
Metadata research and editing
DVPP Project Team
Fralick
Kaitlyn
University of Victoria Digital Victorian Periodical Poetry Project
Victoria, BC, Canada
In the public domain
Poet attribution: Adelaide Anne Procter, Legends and Lyrics, vol. 2, Bell and Daldy, 1861, pp. 33-4.
(AC)
The English Woman’s Journal
5
25
36
Seated one day at the Organ
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IV.—A Lost Chord
.
Seated one day at the Organ
I was weary, and ill at ease,
And my fingers wandered idly
Over the noisy keys.
I do not know what I was playing,
Or what I was dreaming then,
But I struck one chord of music,
Like the sound of a great Amen.
It flooded the crimson twilight
Like the close of an Angel’s Psalm,
And it lay on my fevered spirit
With a touch of infinite calm.
It quieted pain and sorrow
Like love overcoming strife ;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.
It linked all perplexèd meanings
Into one perfect peace,
And trembled away into silence,
As if it were loth to cease.
I have sought, and I seek it vainly,
That one lost chord divine,
That came from the soul of the Organ
And entered into mine.
It may be that Death’s bright Angel
Will speak in that chord again—
It may be that only in Heaven,
I shall hear that grand Amen.
A. A. P.