For why, who writes such histories as these
Doth often bring the reader’s heart such ease,
As when they sit and see what he doth note,
Well fare his heart, say they, this book that wrote!
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From “King Henry Eighth,” Act III. Sc. 1.
ORPHEUS, with his lute, made trees,
And the mountain-tops that freeze,
Bow themselves when he did sing;
To his music plants and flowers
Ever sprung, as sun and showers
There had made a lasting Spring.Every thing that heard him play,
Even the billows of the sea,
Hung their... -
From “The Merchant of Venice,” Act V. Sc. 1.
LORENZO.—How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness, and the night,
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica: look, how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
There ’s not the... -
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory,—
Odors, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on. -
When late I heard the trembling cello play,
In every face I read sad memories
That from dark, secret chambers where they lay
Rose, and looked forth from melancholy eyes.
So every mournful thought found there a tone
To match despondence: sorrow knew its mate;
Ill fortune sighed, and mute despair made moan;
And one deep chord gave answer, “... -
From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began;
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,
And could not heave her head
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arise, ye more than dead!
Then cold and hot, and moist and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music’... -
From the French by Gertrude Hall
“Son joyeux, importun, d’un clavecin sonore.”
—PÉTRUS BOREL.THE KEYBOARD, over which two slim hands float,
Shines vaguely in the twilight pink and gray,
Whilst with a sound like wings, note after note
Takes flight to form a pensive little lay
That strays, discreet and charming, faint, remote,... -
An Ode for Music
WHEN Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell,—
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,—
Possessed beyond the muse’s painting;
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined;
Till once... -
From “The Davideis”
AWAKE, awake, my Lyre!
And tell thy silent master’s humble tale
In sounds that may prevail;
Sounds that gentle thoughts inspire:
Though so exalted she,
And I so lowly be,
Tell her, such different notes make all thy harmony.Hark! how the strings awake:
And, though the moving hand approach not near,... -
An Ode
’T WAS at the royal feast, for Persia won
By Philip’s warlike son:
Aloft in awful state
The godlike hero sate
On his imperial throne:
His valiant peers were placed around,
Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound
(So should desert in arms be crowned);
The lovely Thais,...