Bowles 20: O Harmony! thou tendrest nurse of pain

If we are to judge by the 1797 letter he sent to Bowles, Coleridge liked this sonnet best of all of them: 'I should have pleaded hard too for the first, Bereave me not -- & still more vehemently for the Sonnet to Harmony -- the only description of the effect of Music that suited my experience -- or rose above commonplace --'

O Harmony! thou tenderest nurse of pain,
If that thy note's sweet magic e'er can heal
Griefs which the patient spirit oft may feel,
Oh! let me listen to thy songs again,—
Till memory her fairest tints shall bring,
Hope wake with brighter eye, and list’ning seem
With smiles to think on some delightful dream,
That wav’d o'er the charmed sense its gladsome wing
For when thou leadest all thy soothing strains
More smooth along, the silent passions meet
In one suspended transport, sad and sweet—
And nought but sorrow's softest touch remains,
That, when the transitory charm is o'er,
Just wakes a tear, and then is felt no more.

I'm struggling to see what STC saw in this, I'll confess. 'Patient spirit' is another Bowlesian Empson-ambiguity, I suppose; and the idea (is it?) is that the diverse notes of the musical piece come harmoniously together in a way that propels the diverse emotional states of the poet's soul to unite, 'meet/In one suspended transport, sad and sweet.' Well, fair enough.