Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown;

He raised a mortal to the skiesShe drew an angel down.

THE PASSIONS.

AN ODE FOR MUSIC.

625

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-
Possest beyond the muse's painting;
By turns they felt the g.owing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined;
Till once, 't is said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round
They snatched her instruments of sound;
And, as they oft had heard apart
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each (for madness ruled the hour)
Would prove his own expressive power.

frown,

Revenge impatient rose;

He threw his blood-stained sword in thun

der down;

And, with a withering look,

The war-denouncing trumpet took, And blew a blast so loud and dread, Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of woe!

And, ever and anon, he beat

The doubling drum, with furious heat. And though sometimes, each dreary pause between,

Dejected Pity, at his side,

Her soul-subduing voice applied,

Yet still he kept his wild, unaltered mein, While each strained ball of sight seemed bursting from his head.

eyed queen,

Satyrs and sylvan boys, were seen,

Peeping from forth their alleys green;

Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear;

And Sport leapt up, and seized his beecken spear.

Last came Joy's ecstatic trial:
He, with viny crown advancing,

First to the lively pipe his hand addrest; But soon he saw the brisk awakening viol, Whose sweet entrancing voice he loved the best;

They would have thought, who heard the strain,

They saw, in Tempe's vale, her native maids, Amidst the festal sounding shades,

To some unwearied minstrel dancing,

fixed

Sad proof of thy distressful state;

Of differing themes the veering song was mixed;

And now it courted love-now, raving, called on Hate.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sate retired;
And, from her wild sequestered seat,
In notes by distance made more sweet,
Poured through the mellow horn her pen-
sive soul;

And, dashing soft from rocks around, Bubbling runnels joined the sound; Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole;

Or, o'er some haunted stream, with fond delay,

Round an holy calm diffusing,

Love of peace, and lonely musing, In hollow murmurs died away.

But oh! how altered was its sprightlier tone When Cheerfulness, a nymph of healthiest hue,

Her bow across her shoulder flung,

Her buskins gemmed with morning dew, Blew an inspiring air, that dale and thicket

rung

The hunter's call, to faun and dryad known!

Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round. Loose were her tresses seen, her zone un

bound;

And he, amidst his frolic play,

As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odors from his dewy wings

O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of pleasure, wisdom's aid!
Why, goddess! why, to us denied,
Lay'st thou thy ancient lyre aside?
As, in that loved Athenian bower,
You learned an all commanding power,
Thy mimic soul, O nymph endeared,
Can well recall what then it heard;
Where is thy native simple heart,
Devote to virtue, fancy, art?
Arise, as in that elder time,
Warm, energetic, chaste, sublime!
Thy wonders, in that godlike age,
Fill thy recording sister's page;
'Tis said—and I believe the tale-
Thy humblest reed could more prevail,
Had more of strength, diviner rage,
Than all which charms this laggard age-
E'en all at once together found--
Cecilia's mingled world of sound.
Oh bid our vain endeavors cease;
Revive the just designs of Greece !
Return in all thy simple state-
Confirm the tales her sons relate!

WILLIAM COLLINS

TO A LADY WITH A GUITAR.

ARIEL to Miranda:-Take
This slave of music, for the sake
Of him who is the slave of thee;
And teach it all the harmony
In which thou canst, and only thou,
Make the delighted spirit glow,
Till joy denies itself again,
And, too intense, is turned to pain.

For by permission and command
Of thine own prince Ferdinand,
Poor Ariel sends this silent token
Of more than ever can be spoken;
Your guardian spirit, Ariel, who
From life to life must still pursue
Your happiness, for thus alone
Can Ariel ever find his own.
From Prospero's enchanted cell,
As the mighty verses tell,
To the throne of Naples he
Lit you o'er the trackless sea,
Flitting on, your prow before,
Like a living meteor.
When you die, the silent moon
In her interlunar swoon
Is not sadder in her cell
Than deserted Ariel;
When you live again on earth,
Like an unseen star of birth
Ariel guides you o'er the sea
Of life from your nativity.
Many changes have been run
Since Ferdinand and you begun
Your course of love, and Ariel still

Has tracked your steps and served your will.

Now in humbler, happier lot,
This is all remembered not;
And now, alas! the poor sprite is
Imprisoned for some fault of his
In a body like a grave—
From you he only dares to crave
For his service and his sorrow
A smile to-day, a song to-morrow.

The artist who this viol wrought To echo all harmonious thought,

Felled a tree, while on the steep
The woods were in their winter sleep.
Rocked in that repose divine
On the wind-swept Apennine;
And dreaming, some of autumn past,
And some of spring approaching fast,
And some of April buds and showers,
And some of songs in July bowers,
And all of love; and so this tree-
Oh, that such our death may be!—
Died in sleep, and felt no pain,

To live in happier form again;

627

From which, beneath heaven's fairest star,
The artist wrought this loved guitar:
And taught it justly to reply
To all who question skilfully
In language gentle as thine own;
Whispering in enamored tone
Sweet oracles of woods and dells,
And summer winds in sylvan cells.
For it had learned all harmonies
Of the plains and of the skies,
Of the forests and the mountains,
And the many-voiced fountains;
The clearest echoes of the hills,
The softest notes of falling rills,
The melodies of birds and bees,
The murmuring of summer seas,
And pattering rain, and breathing dew,
And airs of evening; and it knew
That seldom-heard mysterious sound
Which, driven on its diurnal round,
As it floats through boundless day
Our world enkindles on its way.

All this it knows, but will not tell
To those who cannot question well
The spirit that inhabits it;
It talks according to the wit
Of its companions; and no more
Is heard than has been felt before
By those who tempt it to betray
These secrets of an elder day.
But, sweetly as its answers will
Flatter hands of perfect skill,
It keeps its highest holiest tone
For one beloved friend alone.

PEROY BYSSHE SHELLEY

TO CONSTANTIA-SINGING.

THUS to be lost, and thus to sink and die, Perchance were death indeed!-Constantia, turn:

In thy dark eyes a power .ike light doth lie, Even though the sounds which were thy voice, which burn

Between thy lips, are laid to sleep;

Within thy breath, and on thy hair, like

odor it is yet,

And from thy touch like fire doth leap.

Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet

Alas, that the torn heart can bleed, but not forget!

A breathless awe like the swift change,
Unseen but felt, in youthful slumbers,
Wild, sweet, but uncommunicably strange,
Thou breathest now in fast ascending num-
bers.

The cope of heaven seems rent and cloven

By the enchantment of thy strain;
And on my shoulders wings are woven,
To follow its sublime career
Beyond the mighty moons that wane

Upon the verge of nature's utmost sphere, Till the world's shadowy walls are past and disappear.

Her voice is hovering o'er my soul-it lingers, O'ershadowing it with soft and lulling wings;

The blood and life within those snowy fingers Teach witchcraft to the instrumental

strings.

My brain is wild, my breath comes quick-
The blood is listening in my frame;
And thronging shadows, fast and thick,
Fall on my overflowing eyes;
My heart is quivering like a flame ;

As morning dew, that in the sunbeam dies,
I am dissolved in these consuming ecstasies.

I have no life, Constantia, now, but thee; Whilst, like the world-surrounding air, thy song

Flows on, and fills all things with melody.

Now is thy voice a tempest, swift and

strong,

On which, like one in trance upborne,
Secure o'er rocks and waves I sweep,
Rejoicing like a cloud of morn.

Now 't is the breath of summer night,
Which, when the starry waters sleep,

Round western isles, with incense-blossoms bright,

Lingering, suspends my soul in its voluptuous flight.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

ON A LADY SINGING.

OFT as my lady sang for me

That song of the lost one that sleeps by the sea,

Of the grave on the rock, and the cypress tree,

Strange was the pleasure that over mc stole,

For 't was made of old sadness that lives in my soul.

So still grew my heart at each tender word

That the pulse in my bosom scarcely stirred,

And I hardly breathed, but only heard. Where was I?-not in the world of men, Until she awoke me with silence again.

Like the smell of the vine, when its early bloom

Sprinkles the green lane with sunny per fume,

Such a delicate fragrance filled the room. Whether it came from the vine without, Or arose from her presence, I dwell in doubt.

Light shadows played on the pictured wall

From the maples that fluttered outside the hall,

And hindered the daylight-yet ah! not all;

Too little for that all the forest would be-Such a sunbeam she was, and is, to me!