Though cheerfulness and I have long been Yet what is music, and the blended power
Hamonious sounds are still delightful to me, There's sure no passion in the human soul, But finds its food in music.
By music, minds an equal temper know,
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low:
If in the breast tumultuous joys arise,
Music her soft persuasive voice applies;
Or, when the soul is press'd with cares,
Exalts her in enliv ning airs.
Warriors she fires with animated sounds,
Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds:
Melancholy lifts her head,
Morpheus rouses from his bed,
Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes,
List'ning envy drops her snakes;
Intestine wars no more our passions wage,
And giddy factions hear away their rage.
O music, sphere descended maid, Friend of pleasure, wisdom's aid!
Music resembles poetry in each
Are nameless graces, which no method teach,
And which a master's hand alone can reach!
Of voice with instruments of wind and string i
What but an empty pageant of sweet noise?
'Tis past and all that it has left behind
Is but an echo dwelling in the ear
Of the toy-taken fancy, and beside,
A void and countless hour life's brief day
But hark! the village clock strikes nine-the chimes
Merrily follow, tuneful to the sense
Of the pleased clown attentive, while they make False measur'd melody on crazy bells.
O wondrous power of modulated sound!
Which like the air (whose all obedient shape
Thou mak'st thy slave) canst subtilely pervade
The yielded avenues of sense, unlock
The close affections, by some fairy path
Winning an easy way through every ear,
And with thine unsubstantial quality
Holding in mighty chains the hearts of all;
All, but some cold and sullen temper'd spirits,
Who feel no touch of sympathy or love.
Is there a heart that music cannot melt?
Alas! how is that rugged heart forlorn!
Is there, who ne'er those mystic transports felt
Pope. Of solitude and melancholy born?
She told me of a mermaid once, that lay
Along the scoop'd side of a hollow wave,
Singing such dulcet music, that the ear,
Like a woo'd damsel, trembled with delight.
Sir A. Hunt's Julian.
Perhaps the breath of music
May prove more eloquent than my poor words:
It is the medicine of the breaking heart.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet! now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again and louder still,
Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on.
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where mem'ry slept. Wherever I have heard
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains.
There is in souls a sympathy with sounds,
And as the mind is pitch'd, the car is pleas'd
With melting airs of martial, brisk or grave.
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touch'd within us, and the heart replies.
'The sound, upon the fitful gale,
In solemn wise did rise and fail,
Like that wild harp, whose magic to e
Is waken'd by the winds alone.
Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel.
There is a charm, a power,' that sways the breast;
Bids every passion revel or be still;
Inspires with rage, or all our cares dissolves;
Can soothe distraction, and almost despair-
That power is music.
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health.
Music exalts each joy, allays each grief,
Expels diseases, softens every pain,
Subdues the rage of poison and of plague.
For mine is the lay that lightly floats,
And mine are the murmuring dying notes,
That fall as soft as snow on the sea,
And melt in the heart as instantly!
And the passionate strain that, deeply going,
Refines the bosom it trembles through,
As the musk-wind, over the water blowing,
Ruffles the wave, but sweetens it too!
Moore's Laia Rookh But the gentlest of all, are those sounds full of feeling,
That soft from the lute of some lover are stealingSome lover, who knows all the heart-touching power
Armstrong's Art of Preserving Health. Of a lute, and a sigh, in the magical hour.
Whose story is so pleasing, and so sad,
The swains have turn'd it to a plaintive lay,
And sing it as they tend their mountain sheep.
Joanna Baillie's Basil.
I thank thee; this shall be our daily song,
It cheers my heart, although these foolish tears
Scem to disgrace its sweetness.
Joanna Baillie's Beacon.
Anon through every pulse the music stole,
And held sublime communion with the soul,
Wrung from the coyest breast the imprison'd sigh,
And kindled rapture in the coldest eye.
The viewless spirit of a lovely sound,
A living voice, a breathing harmony,
A bodiless enjoyment- born and dying,
With the blest tone that made me!
Byron's Manfred
'Tis sweet to hear
At midnight, on the blue and moonlit deep,
The song and oar of Adria's gondolier,
By distance mellow'd, o'er the waters sweep.
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There's music in the sighing of a reed;
Montgomery's World before the Flood. There's music in the gushing of a rill;
Music!-O how faint, how weak,
Language fades before thy spell!
Why should feeling ever speak
When thou canst breathe her soul so well?
Friendship's balmy words may feign,
Love's are e'en more false than they;
Oh' 't is only music's strain
Can sweetly soothe, and not betray!
There's music in all things, if men had ears;
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
Not my sweet lute, that wrought me wrong;
t was not song that taught me love, But it was love that taught me song.
Miss Landon's Poems. The Father spake! In grand reverberations
The music was strong to pass!
Through space roll'd on the mighty music-tide, While to its low, majestic modulations The clouds of chaos slowly swept aside.
Mrs. Osgood's Poems
And wheresoever, in His rich creation,
Sweet music breathes-in wave, or bird, or sou 'Tis but the faint and far reverberation
Of that grand tune to which the planets roll Mrs. Osgood's Poems
My low-roof'd cottage is this hour a heaven
Music is in it and the song she sings,
That sweet-voic'd wife of mine, arrests the ea
Of my young child, awake upon her knee.
Willis's Prema
Why should that name be sounded more than yours? He that is ambitious for his son, should give him.
Write them together, yours is as fair a name;
Sound them, it doth become the mouth as well;
Weigh them, it is as heavy; conjure with them,
Brutus will start a spirit as soon as Cæsar.
Now in the names of all the gods at once,
Upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed,
'That he is grown so great?
Shaks. Julius Cæsar.
I was born free as Cæsar; so were you:
We both have fed as well; and we can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he.
Good name in man or woman dear-
Is the immediate jewe, of their souls.
Shaks. Othello. Who swerves from innocence, who makes divorce Of that serene companion - - a good name, Recovers not his loss; but walks with shame, With doubt, with fear, and haply with remorse. Wordsworth Sonnet.
My hopes are with the dead; anon
My place with them will be,
And I with them shall travel on
Through all futurity:
Yet leaving here a name, I trust,
That will not perish in the dust.
1 breathe the dear and cherished name,
And long-lost scenes arise;
Life's glowing landscape spreads the same,-
The same Hope's kindling skies.
1 thy name Mary, maiden fair?
Such should, methinks, its music be; The sweetest name that mortals bear,
Were best ocfitting thee;
And she, to whom it once was given,
Was half of earth, and half of heaven
O. W. Holmes's Poems.
For those have serv'd other men, haply may injure by their evils;
Or otherwise may hinder by their glories; there. fore set him by himself,
To win for his individual name some clear prais
Tupper's Proverbial Philosophy
The sweetest tales of human weal and sorrow,
The fairest trophies of the limner's fame,
To my fond fancy, MARY, seem to borrow
Celestial halos from thy gentle name.
H. T. Tuckerman
Call me pet names, dearest! Call me thy bird,
That flies to thy breast at one cherishing word,
That folds its wild wings there, ne'er dreaming
of flight,
That tenderly sings there in loving delight!
Oh! my sad heart keeps pining for one fond word,-
Call me pet names, dearest! Call me thy bird!
Mrs. Osgood's Poema.
Land of the West! though passing brief
The record of thine age,
Thou hast a name that darkens all
On history's wide page!
Let all the blasts of fame ring out
Thine shall be louder far:
Let others boast their satellites -
Thou hast the planet star!
Thou hast a name whose characters
Of light shall ne'er depart;
'Tis stamp'd upon the dullest brain,
And warms the coldest heart; A war-cry fit for any land
Where freedom's to be won : Land of the West! it stands alone -It is thy Washington!
A frirer red stands blushing in the rose
Than that which on the bridegroom's vestment
flows,
Take but the humblest lily of the field,
And, if our pride will to our reason yield,
It must, by sure comparison, be shown
That on the regal seat great David's scn,
Array'd in all his robes and types of power,
Shines with less glory than that simple flower.
Prior's Soloman.
Who lives to nature rarely can be poor;
Who lives to fancy, never can be rich.
Young's Night Thoughts.
Man's rich with little, were his judgment true;
Vature is frugal, and her wants are few.
Young's Love of Fame.
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul;
Laat, changed through all, is yet in all the same;
Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame;
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze,
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees,
Lives through all life, extends through all extent
Spreads undivided, operates unspent ;
Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal part,
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart,
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns;
To him no high, no low, no great, no small;
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all.
Pope's Essay on Man
See through this air, this ocean, and this carth,
All matter quick, and bursting into birth.
Above, how high progressive life may go!
Around, how wide! how deep extend below!
Vast chain of being! which from God began,
Nature's ethereal, human, angel, man,
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see,
No glass can reach, from infinite to thee,
From thee to nothing.
Like nature? can imagination boast,
Amid its gay creation, hues like her's?
Or can it mix them with that matchless skill,
And lose them in each other, as appears
In every bud that blows.
Nature! great parent! whose unceasing hand
Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year
How mighty, how majestic, are thy works!
With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul!
That sees astonish'd! and astonish'd sings!
Thomson's Seasons
Ask the swain
Who journeys homeward from a summer day's
Long labour, why, forgetful of his toils
And due repose, he loiters to behold
The sunshine gleaming as through amber clouds.
O'er all the western sky; full soon, I ween,
His rude expression and untutor'd airs,
Beyond the power of language, will unfold
The form of beauty smiling at his heart,
How lovely! how commanding!
Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination
Thus nature works as if to mock at art,
And in defiance of her rival powers;
By these fortuitous and random strokes
Performing such inimitable feats,
As she with all her rules can never reach.
Couper's Tesh
How oft upon yon eminence, our pace
Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind scarce conscious that it siew
While admiration feeding at the eye,
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene:
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