No Pleasure Without Pain – by Sir Walter Raleigh

Sweet were the joys that both might like and last;
Strange were the state exempt from all distress;
Happy the life that no mishap should taste;
Blessed the chance might never change success.
Were such a life to lead or state to prove,
Who would not wish that such a life were love?

But oh! the soury sauce of sweet unsure,
When pleasures flit, and fly with waste of wind.
The trustless trains that hoping hearts allure,
When sweet delights do but allure the mind;
When care consumes and wastes the wretched wight,
While fancy feeds and draws of her delight.

What life were love, if love were free from pain?
But oh that pain with pleasure matched should meet!
Why did the course of nature so ordain
That sugared sour must sauce the bitter sweet?
Which sour from sweet might any means remove,
What hap, what heaven, what life, were like to love!

Music – by Walter de la Mare

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know,
And all her lovely things even lovelier grow;
Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees
Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies.

When music sounds, out of the water rise
Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes,
Rapt in strange dreams burns each enchanted face,
With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place.

When music sounds, all that I was I am
Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came;
And from Time’s woods break into distant song
The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along.