More precious than the benison of friends About the honored death-bed of the rich, To him who else were lonely, that another Of the great family is near and feels.

SIR THOMAS NOON TALFOURD.

CHORUS.

With ravished ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god,

Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres.

OF MUSIC.

AN ODE.

'T WAS at the royal feast, for Persia won

By Philip's warlike son:

Aloft in awful state

The godlike hero sate

On his imperial throne :

His valiant peers were placed around,

Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound
(So should desert in arms be crowned);
The lovely Thais, by his side,
Sate like a blooming Eastern bride
In flower of youth and beauty's pride.
Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

CHORUS.

Happy, happy, happy pair!
None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

Timotheus, placed on high

Amid the tuneful choir,

With flying fingers touched the lyre ;

The trembling notes ascend the sky,
And heavenly joys inspire.
The song began from Jove,
Who left his blissful seats above
(Such is the power of mighty love).
A dragon's fiery form belied the god;
Sublime on radiant spires he rode,

When he to fair Olympia pressed,
And while he sought her snowy breast;
Then round her slender waist he curled,
And stamped an image of himself, a sovereign
of the world.

The listening crowd admire the lofty sound,
A present deity! they shout around;
A present deity! the vaulted roofs rebound.

With ravished ears

The monarch hears, Assumes the god,

Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres.

Soothed with the sound the king grew vain; Fought all his battles o'er again;

And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.

The master saw the madness rise;
His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;
And, while he heaven and earth defied,
Changed his hand and checked his pride.
He chose a mournful muse,
Soft pity to infuse :

He sung Darius, great and good,

By too severe a fate,
Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,

And weltering in his blood;
Deserted, at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
With downeast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his altered soul

The various turns of chance below;
And, now and then, a sigh he stole ;
And tears began to flow.

CHORUS.

Revolving in his altered soul

The various turns of chance below; And, now and then, a sigh he stole ; And tears began to flow.

The mighty master smiled, to see
That love was in the next degree;
"T was but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.

Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
War, he sung, is toil and trouble;
Honor, but an empty bubble;

Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying : If the world be worth thy winning, Think, O, think it worth enjoying! Lovely Thais sits beside thee,

Take the good the gods provide thee. The many rend the skies with loud applause; So Love was crowned, but Music won the cause. The prince, unable to conceal his pain, Gazed on the fair

Who caused his care,

And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again :

At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

CHORUS.

The prince, unable to conceal his pain, Gazed on the fair

Who caused his care,

And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again :

At length, with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

Now strike the golden lyre again :
A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.

Hark, hark, the horrid sound

Has raised up his head ;

As awaked from the dead,
And amazed, he stares around.

Revenge! revenge! Timotheus cries,

See the furies arise !

See the snakes that they rear,
How they hiss in their hair,

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain,

And unburied remain,

Inglorious on the plain :

Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,
While organs yet were mute;

Timotheus, to his breathing flute,
And sounding lyre,

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,
Inventress of the vocal frame;

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,
And added length to solemn sounds,
With nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown
before.

Let old Timotheus yield the prize,
Or both divide the crown;
He raised a mortal to the skies,
She drew an angel down.

'Though so exalted she,

And I so lowly be,

Next Anger rushed; his eyes, on fire,
In lightnings owned his secret stings:

mony.

Hark! how the strings awake:

A kind of numerous trembling make.
Now all thy forces try;

Now all thy charms apply;

Revenge upon her ear the conquests of her eye.

Weak Lyre! thy virtue sure

Is useless here, since thou art only found To cure, but not to wound,

And she to wound, but not to cure.

Too weak, too, wilt thou prove

My passion to remove ;

Physic to other ills, thou 'rt nourishment to love.

Sleep, sleep again, my Lyre!

For thou canst never tell my humble tale

In sounds that will prevail,

Nor gentle thoughts in her inspire;
All thy vain mirth lay by,

Bid thy strings silent lie,

'T was sad by fits, by starts 't was wild. But thou, O Hope, with eyes so fair, What was thy delightful measure? Still it whispered promised pleasure,

And bade the lovely scenes at distance hail ! Still would her touch the strain prolong; And from the rocks, the woods, the vale, She called on Echo still, through all the song; And where her sweetest theme she chose, A soft responsive voice was heard at every close; And Hope, enchanted, smiled, and waved her golden hair.

And longer had she sung- but, with a frown,

Revenge impatient rose ;

He threw his blood-stained sword in thunder down;

And, with a withering look,
The war-denouncing trumpet took,
And blew a blast so loud and dread,

die.

ABRAHAM COWLEY.

THE PASSIONS.

AN ODE FOR MUSIC.

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, -
Possessed beyond the muse's painting;
By turns they felt the glowing 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.

First Fear his hand, its skill to try, Amid the chords bewildered laid, And back recoiled, he knew not why, E'en at the sound himself had made.

And ever and anon he beat

The doubling drum with furious heat; And though, sometimes, each dreary pause be

tween,

Dejected Pity, at his side,

Her soul-subduing voice applied,

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

Thy numbers, Jealousy, to naught were 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 pensive
soul:

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

ure 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 O, 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! The oak-crowned sisters, and their chaste-eyed

queen,

Satyrs and sylvan boys, were seen

Feeping from forth their alleys green : Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear;

And Sport leapt up, and seized his beechen

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,
While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings,
Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round:
Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound ;
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;
"T is 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.
O, bid our vain endeavors cease ;
Revive the just designs of Greece !
Return in all thy simple state,
fonfirm the tales her sons relate!

WILLIAM COLLINS.

THE NIGHTINGALE'S SONG.

FROM "MUSIC'S DUEL."

Now westward Sol had spent the richest beams
Of noon's high glory, when, hard by the streams
Of Tiber, on the scene of a green plat,
Under protection of an oak, there sat
He lost the day's heat and his own hot cares.
A sweet lute's-master, in whose gentle airs

Close in the covert of the leaves there stood
A nightingale, come from the neighboring wood
(The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,
Their muse, their siren, harmless siren she):
There stood she listening, and did entertain
The music's soft report, and mould the same
In her own murmurs; that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good.

This lesson too

She gives them back; her supple breast thrills

out

Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song ;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng

Of short thick sobs, whose thundering volleys

float,

And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, stilled out of her breast;
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugared nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody;
Music's best seed-plot; when in ripened airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears

His honey-dropping tops ploughed by her breath
Which there reciprocally laboreth.

In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire,
Sounded to the name of great Apollo's lyre;
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipped angel-imps, that swill their
throats

In cream of morning Helicon, and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,

To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing
(Most divine service), whose so early lay
Prevents the eyelids of the blushing day.
There might you hear her kindle her soft voice
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise ;
And lay the groundwork of her hopeful song.
Still keeping in the forward stream so long,
Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledged notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Winged with their own wild echoes, prattling fly.