Had I painted it, had I written it, I might have explained it.

But in music, out of the sounds something emerges which is above the sounds, and that ineffable thing I touched and lost.

I took the well-known sounds of earth, and out of them came a fourth sound, nay, not a sound--but a star.

This was a flash of God's will which opened the Eternal to me for a moment; and I shall find it again in the eternal life.

Therefore, from the achievement of earth and the failure of it, I turn to God, and in him I see that every image, thought, impulse, and dream of knowledge or of beauty--which, coming whence we know not, flit before us in human life, breathe for a moment, and then depart; which, like my music, build a sudden palace in imagination; which abide for an instant and dissolve, but which memory and hope retain as a ground of aspiration--are not lost to us though they seem to die in their immediate passage.