In this installment, Hermine Pinson reads “Music, when Soft Voices die” by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Pinson, a native of Beaumont, Texas, is the author of two collections of poetry, Ashe and Mama Yetta and Other Poems, both with Wings Press. She has also published short fiction and critical essays in such publications as Callaloo; AfricanAmerican Review; Texas Bound: Short Stories by and about Texas Women; Konch, Commonwealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia, and Verse. She is presently working on a new collection to be published in the fall of 2007.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Music, when Soft Voices die"

MUSIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.

Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the belovèd's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on.