Poignant and sweet....

Ok, so I was reading this book, right, and this passage just popped right out at me: So vividly and uniquely does it capture the sentiments of my own soul upon hearing certain choral arrangements that I had no choice but to steal it, and share it with the world, on this, my blog:

"He had just come down from the shadowed gallery of the chapel, where the monks had been singing the noon rites. The clean, sculpted tones of their solemn prayers had touched him in a way that the chapel and the dry doings within its tapestried walls seldom did -- each note so carefully held and then lovingly released, like a woodcarver putting delicate toy boats into a stream. The singing voices had wrapped his secret heart in a sweet, cold net of silver; the tender resignation of its strands still clutched him. It had been a strange sensation: for a moment he had felt himself all feathers and racing heartbeat -- a frightened bird cupped in the hands of God.

He had run down the gallery steps, feeling suddenly unworthy of such solicitousness and delicacy -- he was too clumsy, too foolish. It seemed that he might, with his chapped scullion's hands, somehow mishandle the beautiful music."

-Tad Williams, The Dragonbone Chair