Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the sway Is love, though oft to agony distrest, And tho' his favorite seat be feeble woman's breast. But if thou goest, I follow"" Peace!" he said,— Brought from a pensive though a happy place. He spake of love, such love as Spirits feel Of all that is most beauteous-imaged there And fields invested with purpureal gleams; Climes which the sun, who sheds the brightest day Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey. Yet there the Soul shall enter which hath earned That privilege by virtue." Ill," said he, "The end of man's existence I discerned, Who from ignoble games and revelry Could draw, when we had parted, vain delight, While tears were thy best pastime, day and night; And while my youthful peers before my eyes (Each hero following his peculiar bent) Prepared themselves for glorious enterprise The wished-for wind was given :-I then revolved And, if no worthier led the way, resolved Yet bitter, oft-times bitter, was the pang flowers; My new-planned cities, and unfinished towers. But should suspense permit the Foe to cry, Old frailties then recurred:-but lofty thought In act embodied, my deliverance wrought. And Thou, though strong in love, art all too weak In reason, in self-government too slow; I counsel thee by fortitude to seek Our blest re-union in the shades below. The invisible world with thee hath sympathized; Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend- Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that end; Aloud she shrieked! for Hermes reappears! [vain : Swift toward the realms that know not earthly day, Thus, all in vain exhorted and reproved, -Yet tears to human suffering are due; From out the tomb of him for whom she died; *For the account of these long-lived trees, see Pliny's Natural History, lib. xvi. cap. 44; and for the features in the character of Protesi. laus, see the Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides. Virgil places the Shade of Laodamia in a mournful region, among unhappy Lovers, It comes His Laodamia ON THE POWER OF SOUND. ARGUMENT. The Ear addressed, as occupied by a spiritual functionary, in communion with sounds, individual, or combined in studied harmony.-Sources and effects of those sounds (to the close of the 6th Stanza).-The power of music, whence proceeding, exemplified in the idiot.-Origin of music, and its effect in early ages-how produced (to the middle of the 10th stanza) The mind recalled to sounds acting casually and severally-Wish uttered (11th Stanza) that these could be united into a scheme or system for moral interests and intellectual contemplation.(Stanza 12th). The Pythagorean theory of numbers and music, with their supposed power over the motions of the universe-imaginations consonant with such a theory.-Wish expressed (in 11th Stanza) realized, in some degree, by the representation of all sounds under the form of thanksgiving to the Creator.-(Last Stanza) the destruction of earth and the planetary system-the survival of audible harmony and its support in the Divine Nature, as revealed in Holy Writ. I. THY functions are ethereal, As if within thee dwelt a glancing mind, Strict passage, through which sighs are brought, And whispers for the heart their slave; And shrieks, that revel in abuse Of shivering flesh; and warbled air, Whose piercing sweetness can unloose Hosannas pealing down the long-drawn aisle, II. The headlong streams and fountains Serve Thee, invisible Spirit, with untired powers; That bleat, how tender! of the dam Shout, cuckoo! let the vernal soul Go with thee to the frozen zone; Toll from thy loftiest perch, lone bell-bird, toll! Mercy from her twilight throne Listening to Nun's faint throb of holy fear, To sailor's prayer breathed from a darkening sea, Or widow's cottage-lullaby. III. Ye Voices and ye shadows, And Images of voice-to hound and horn Where mists are breaking up or gone, |