ODE V. ON ST. CECILIA's DAY. BY THEOPHILUS PARSONS. 1693. CECILIA, look, look down, and see A tribute paid to Heaven and Thee: Warm you, great Saint, your willing choir, May you move on every string, In every note your grateful influence sing, When beings in a dark confusion lay, Thy voice the sullen gloom did chase, And Chaos fled before the new-born day. Parent of all! thou still dost sway, And o'er this lower world preside; But Music quick as lightning flies; We love, we sigh, and we despair, We catch at sounds, and grasp the fleeting air. Hark! hark! the trumpet calls to arm; What vein so drowsy feels not the alarm, Or the gay violin's persuading airs, The philtre glides successless through our ears. Ev'n Cecilia's voice no more can tame The forward hero's lust of fame. A charm might vanquish, if apply'd, Softer than Love, yet absolute as Fate. Such jarring passions to compose. Still, still the work, O sacred Harmony, is thine! The rivulets their murmurs cease; GRAND CHORUS. Tune all your instruments aloud, Glad voices mingling with the cheerful croud; Sacred to Cecilia's praise. Thus we'll grateful offerings bring, Yearly thus her praises sing: Till, join'd in chorus with our Saint above, We take a nobler theme, to prove By endless Harmony immortal Love. ODE VI. ON ST. CECILIA's DAY. BY THOMAS YALDEN. D.D. 1693. I. BEGIN, and strike th' harmonious lyre! To raise our souls, and charm the ear, Sacred to Music, Love, and blest Cecilia. Her skilful hand first taught our strings to move: Who first anticipated heaven below, And play'd the hymns on earth, that she now sings above. 11. What moving charms his tuneful voice contains! Charms that through the willing ear A tide of pleasing raptures bear, And, with diffusive joys, run thrilling thro' our veins, The listening soul does sympathize, Then free from cares, and unconfir'd, III. Music's the language of the blest above, Nor in just raptures tell the wondrous power of Love. 'Tis Nature's dialect, design'd To charm, and to instruct the mind. Music's an universal good! That does dispense its joys around, In all the elegance of sound, To be by men admir'd, by angels understood. IV. Let every restless passion cease to move! The kind diverter of our care, The surest refuge mournful grief can find, |