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Religion in its Place

  ………..Religion in its Place

“Music continuing the beauty of poetry without its idea” ~ Maurice Rollinat

You know how music pieces for a choir
Or smaller sets of human voice will end
With instrumental music, with no fire
Of words aflame at last, without the blend
Of poetry and melody?  The notes
Go on alone without the singing.  Why?
Because the music’s writer then devotes
Himself to music, declines to comply
Completely with the tacit teaching’s gleam
That syllables and meaning are the point.
He knows that only music is supreme,
That dogma is not needed to anoint.
..The voices, texts and doctrines fall away
….And we are left in music’s sacred sway.

~ Phillip Whidden

1 Comment

  1. Tom

    Great. Really interesting subject. I’m tripping a bit over “gleam” at the end of line 9.

    As it is, it reads: ” . . . declines to comply
    Completely with the tacit teaching’s gleam
    That syllables and meaning are the point.”

    I wonder if you might try: ” . . . declines to comply
    Completely with [ / / / s] who deem
    That syllables and meaning are the point.”

    What to fill the blank with? Something equivalent to “didacticists” as it were? or? synonym for “pedant’s” ??

    or how about “meme”? “the tacit teaching’s meme” ??? I don’t know!

    Reply

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