For several years I taught a university course called "Music and Words". The subject is vast (oh, wonderful!), and I pointed it toward relationships between sounds and words, which themselves of course contain both sound and meaning.
Among our topics was the music of poetry itself, in its myriad combinations of sounds and rhythms. In regard to this, word-sounds and rhymes always come to mind first, and they can be used in many ways, some quite obvious to us, others subtler. Ben Jonson's "Queen and Huntress", from his comedy Cynthia's Revels (1601) composed in homage to Queen Elizabeth, opens with the following stanza. We can easily enjoy its regular rhythms and cheerful end-rhymes: fair, sleep, chair, keep, light, bright.
Queen and huntress, chaste and fair,
Now the sun is laid to sleep,
Seated in thy silver chair,
State in wonted manner keep;
Hesperus entreats thy light,
Goddess excellently bright.
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44451/cynthias-revels-queen-and-huntress-chaste-and-fair.]
By contrast, the first few lines of Seamus Heaney's lovely "Blackberry Picking" from Death of a Naturalist (1966) contain just as much sound-music, but assembled in subtler ways. This kind of poem plays music my ears love, yet it is tricky to explain why it sounds like music! It is the small groups of words with similar sounds (partial rhyme): a few are August given; given heavy; given rain sun; For full; glossy clot. And then the slightly pounding rhythm of short words in line 4: red, green, hard, knot.
Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50981/blackberry-picking.]
One of the most astonishing achievements in word-music, I believe, is George Herbert's "Easter Wings" from The Temple (published 1633, the year of his death). The poem takes as its subject the Christian story of sin and redemption. Its music is subtle, yet clear. It is easy to find end-rhymes, but what is spectacular is the arrangement of lines, whose changing lengths create a brilliant rhythm.
Each of the two stanzas is printed in the shape of a pair of wings; long lines gradually become shorter and shorter, and then increase. But this is not just a treat for the eyes! In line 1 of stanza 1, mankind is created in the Garden of Eden, full and noble, surrounded by "wealth and store". Immediately in line 2, "he lost the same" (a shorter line!). He decays line by line, becoming smaller and smaller and more cramped because of his loss, until he is finally "most poore". But he will be redeemed: he starts tiny ("with thee"), and rises up, becoming gradually larger, flying up to heaven along with angels in longer and longer lines, until the "wealth and store" of his original condition are restored.
If we read the poem aloud, listening to the lengths of the lines, we discover Herbert's poetic achievement: to embed the story itself in the rhythmic music of the words!
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
My tender age in sorrow did beginne
And still with sicknesses and shame.
Thou didst so punish sinne,
That I became
Most thinne.
With thee
Let me combine,
And feel thy victorie:
For, if I imp my wing on thine,
Affliction shall advance the flight in me.
[Norton Anthology of Poetry, 3rd ed. (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1983), p. 254 and https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44361/easter-wings. Some notes about word-meanings: "this day": Easter; "the fall": of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden; “imp”: from medieval falconry; additional feathers were “imped” (grafted) onto a hawk's wing to enable it to fly more strongly.]
Jean-Marie Leclair, Sonate IV à deux violons and T.S. Eliot, Landscapes
Photo by Alexandra Eddy