Serenade to Music

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!

Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony

Look, how the floor of heaven

Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:

There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st

But in his motion like an angel sings

Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins;

Such harmony is in immortal souls;

But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it

Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn:

With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear

And draw her home with music

I am never merry when I hear sweet music

The reason is, your spirits are attentive:

The man that hath no music in himself

Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds

Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;

The motions of his spirit are dull as night

And his affections dark as Erebus:

Let no such man be trusted... Music! hark!

It is your music of the house

Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day

Silence bestows that virtue on it

How many things by season season'd are

To their right praise and true perfection!

Peace, ho! the moon sleeps with Endymion

And would not be awak'd

Soft stillness and the night

Become the touches of sweet harmony