If music and sweet poetry agree,
As they must needs, the sister and the brother,
Then must the love be great ’twixt thee and me,
Because thou lov’st the one and I the other.
Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch
Upon the lute doth ravish human sense;
Spenser to me, whose deep conceit is such,
As passing all conceit, needs no defence.
Thou lov’st to hear the sweet melodious sound
That Phœbus’ lute, the queen of music, makes;
And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned
Whenas himself to singing he betakes:
One god is god of both, as poets feign,
One knight loves both, and both in thee remain.

– Richard Barnfield, 1574-1621 (attributed to Shakespeare)

This Thursday morning on WPRB, we invoke the Muses (or a number of them anyway) for five hours of poetry and music.

We’ll hear our share of singing, of course – choral settings and lieder – but also a satisfying number of orchestral and instrumental works, with music inspired by the poetry or persons of Matthew Arnold, Aloysius Bertrand, William Blake, Robert Burns, Lord Byron, Lewis Carroll, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, E.E. Cummings, A.E. Houseman, Victor Hugo, Ben Johnson, Edward Lear, Federico Garcia Lorca, Edgar Allan Poe, Alexander Pushkin, William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Wallace Stevens, Dylan Thomas and William Butler Yeats, or as many of those as I can get to.

We’ll also enjoy a visit from J.D. Burnett, founder and artistic director of the Kinnara Ensemble, which will perform at The Hun School of Princeton this Saturday at 8 p.m., presenting Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “Serenade to Music,” along with works by Johannes Brahms and others. He’ll drop by at around 10:00 to tell us a little bit more about their season.

I hope you’ll join me for a banquet of poetry and music, tomorrow morning from 6 to 11 ET, at WPRB 103.3 FM or online at wprb.com. We’re not averse to verse on Classic Ross Amico.