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ON THE POWER OF SOUND

Was for belief no dream : *-thy skill, Arion !
Could humanise the creatures of the sea,

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Where men were monsters.† A last grace he craves,
Leave for one chant ;—the dulcet sound
Steals from the deck o'er willing waves,
And listening dolphins gather round.‡
Self-cast, as with a desperate course,
’Mid that strange audience, he bestrides
A proud One docile as a managed horse;
And singing, while the accordant hand
Sweeps his harp, the Master rides;

So shall he touch at length a friendly strand,
And he, with his preserver, shine star-bright
In memory, through silent night.

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X

The pipe of Pan, to shepherds

Couched in the shadow of Mænalian pines, §
Was passing sweet; the eyeballs of the leopards,
That in high triumph drew the Lord of vines,
How did they sparkle to the cymbal's clang!
While Fauns and Satyrs beat the ground
In cadence, ||—and Silenus swang

This way and that, with wild-flowers crowned.¶

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* The fable of Amphion moving stones and raising the walls of Thebes by his melody is explained by supposing him gifted with an eloquence and power of persuasion that roused the savage people to rise and build the town of Thebes.-ED.

The story of Arion, lyric poet and musician of Lesbos, was that having gone into Italy, settled there, and grown rich, he wished to revisit his native country, taking some of his fortune with him. The sailors of the ship determined to murder him, and steal his treasure. He asked, as a last favour, that he might play a tune on his lyre. As soon as he began he attracted the creatures of the deep, and leaping into the sea, one of the dolphins carried him, lyre in hand, to the shore.-ED.

Compare A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 11. scene i. I. 150.-ED. § Mænalus, a mountain in Arcadia, sacred to Pan, covered with pine trees, a favourite haunt of shepherds.-See Virgil, Eclogues, viii. 24; Georgics, i. 17; Ovid, Metamorphoses, i. 216.-ED.

Compare Gray's Progress of Poesy, ll. 33-35.-Ed.

In his expedition to the East, Bacchus was clothed in a panther's skin. He was accompanied by all the Satyrs, and by Silenus crowned with flowers and almost always intoxicated.-ED.

VOL. VII

P

To life, to life give back thine ear:

Ye who are longing to be rid

Of fable, though to truth subservient, hear
The little sprinkling of cold earth that fell
Echoed from the coffin-lid;

The convict's summons in the steeple's knell ;
"The vain distress-gun," from a leeward shore,
Repeated—heard, and heard no more!

For terror, joy, or pity,

XI

Vast is the compass and the swell of notes:
From the babe's first cry to voice of regal city,
Rolling a solemn sea-like bass, that floats
Far as the woodlands-with the trill to blend
Of that shy songstress, † whose love-tale

Might tempt an angel to descend,

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While hovering o'er the moonlight vale.

Ye wandering Utterances, ‡ has earth no scheme,
No scale of moral music—to unite

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Powers that survive but in the faintest dream 1

Of memory?—O that ye2 might stoop to bear
Chains, such precious chains of sight
As laboured minstrelsies through ages wear!
O for a balance fit the truth to tell
Of the Unsubstantial, pondered well!

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* I have been unable to trace this quotation.-ED.

+ The nightingale.—ED.

Compare To the Cuckoo, vol. ii. p. 289—

A wandering Voice.

ED.

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ON THE POWER OF SOUND

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By one pervading spirit

XII

Of tones and numbers all things are controlled,
As sages taught, where faith was found to merit
Initiation in that mystery old.1*

The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still
As they themselves appear to be,

Innumerable voices fill

The towering headlands, crowned with mist,

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With everlasting harmony;

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Strains that support the Seasons in their round;
Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.

XIII

Break forth into thanksgiving,

Ye banded instruments of wind and chords;

1 1835.

There is a world of spirit,

By tones and numbers guided and controlled;
And glorious privilege have they who merit
Initiation in that mystery old.

MS. copy by Dorothy Wordsworth.

* The fundamental idea, both in the intellectual and moral philosophy of the Pythagoreans, was that of harmony or proportion. Their natural science or cosmology was dominated by the same idea, that as the world and all spheres within the universe were constructed symmetrically, and moved around a central focus, the forms and the proportions of things were best expressed by number. All good was due to the principle of order; all evil to disorder. In accordance with the mathematical conception of the universe which ruled the Pythagoreans, justice was equality (ioórns), that is to say it consisted in each one receiving equally according to his deserts. Friendship too was equality of feeling and relationship; harmony being the radical idea, alike in the ethics and in the cosmology of the school.-ED.

Compare Keats, in a letter to his friend Bailey, in 1817: "The great elements we know of are no mean comforters; the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown; the air is our robe of state; the earth is our throne; and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before it."-ED.

Unite, to magnify the Ever-living,*

Your inarticulate notes with the voice of words!
Nor hushed be service from the lowing mead,

Nor mute the forest hum of noon;

Thou too be heard, lone eagle! † freed
From snowy peak and cloud, attune
Thy hungry barkings to the hymn

Of joy, that from her utmost walls

The six-days' Work, ‡ by flaming Seraphim
Transmits to Heaven! As Deep to Deep

Shouting through one valley calls,

All worlds, all natures, mood and measure keep
For praise and ceaseless gratulation, poured
Into the ear of God, their Lord!

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XIV

A Voice to Light gave Being ; §

To Time, and Man his earth-born chronicler ;

A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing,

And sweep away life's visionary stir;

The trumpet (we, intoxicate with pride,
Arm at its blast for deadly wars)

To archangelic lips applied,

The grave shall open, quench the stars.||
O Silence! are Man's noisy years
No more than moments of thy life? ¶

* Compare The Excursion, book iv. l. 1163 (vol. v. p. 188)—

choral song, or burst

Sublime of instrumental harmony,

To glorify the Eternal!

+ See the Fenwick note prefixed to this poem.-ED.

Genesis i.-ED.

ED.

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§"And God said, Let there be light, and there was light" (Genesis i. 3). ED.

Corinthians xv. 52.-ED.

¶ Compare Ode, Intimations of Immortality, in stanza ix.—

Our noisy years seem moments in the being

Of the eternal Silence.

ED.

ON THE POWER OF SOUND

Is Harmony, blest queen of smiles and tears,
With her smooth tones and discords just,

Tempered into rapturous strife,

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Thy destined bond-slave? No! though earth be dust
And vanish, though the heavens dissolve, her stay
Is in the WORD, that shall not pass away.*

* St. Luke xxi. 33.-ED.

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