ODE ON ST. CECILIA'S DAY.
MDCCVIII.
I.
Descend, ye Nine![1] descend and sing;
The breathing instruments inspire,
Wake into voice each silent string,
And sweep the sounding lyre!
In a sadly pleasing strain,[2]
Let the warbling lute complain:
Let the loud trumpet sound,
Till the roofs all around
The shrill echoes rebound;
While in more lengthen'd notes and slow,
The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.
Hark! the numbers soft and clear
Gently steal upon the ear;
Now louder, and yet louder rise,
And fill with spreading sounds the skies:
Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,
In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats,
Till, by degrees, remote and small,
The strains decay,
And melt away,
In a dying, dying fall.
II.
By music, minds an equal temper know,[3]
Nor swell too high, nor sink too low.
If in the breast tumultuous joys arise,
Music her soft, assuasive[4] voice applies;
Or, when the soul is press'd with cares,
Exalts her in enlivening 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,
Listening Envy drops her snakes;
Intestine war no more our passions wage,
And giddy factions hear away their rage.
III.
But when our country's cause provokes to arms,
How martial music every bosom warms!
So when the first bold vessel dared the seas,
High on the stern the Thracian raised his strain,[5]
While Argo saw her kindred trees
Descend from Pelion to the main.
Transported demi-gods[6] stood round,
And men grew heroes at the sound,
Inflamed with glory's charms;
Each chief his sevenfold shield display'd,
And half unsheathed the shining blade:
And seas, and rocks, and skies rebound,
To arms! to arms! to arms!
IV.
But when, through all the infernal bounds[7]
Which flaming Phlegethon surrounds,
Love, strong as death,[8] the poet led
To the pale nations of the dead,
What sounds were heard,
What scenes appear'd,
O'er all the dreary coast!
Dreadful gleams,
Dismal screams,
Fires that glow,
Shrieks of woe,
Sullen moans,
Hollow groans,
And cries of tortured ghosts!
But, hark! he strikes the golden lyre;
And see! the tortured ghosts respire,
See, shady forms[9] advance!
Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still,[10]
Ixion rests upon his wheel,
And the pale spectres dance;
The Furies sink upon their iron beds,
And snakes uncurl'd hang listening round their heads.
V.
By the streams that ever flow,
By the fragrant winds that blow
O'er the Elysian flowers;
By those happy souls who dwell
In yellow meads of asphodel,
Or amaranthine bowers;
By the heroes' armed shades,
Glittering through the gloomy glades,
By the youths that died for love,
Wandering in the myrtle grove,
Restore, restore Eurydice to life:
Oh take the husband, or return the wife!
He sung, and hell[11] consented
To hear the poet's prayer;
Stern Proserpine relented,
And gave him back the fair.
Thus song could prevail
O'er death and o'er hell,
A conquest how hard and how glorious!
Though fate had fast bound her
With Styx nine times round her,
Yet music and love were victorious.[12]
VI.
But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:
Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!
How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?
No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.
Now under hanging mountains,
Beside the falls of fountains,
Or where Hebrus wanders,
Rolling in meanders,
All alone,
Unheard, unknown,
He makes his moan;
And calls her ghost,
For ever, ever, ever lost!
Now with furies surrounded,[13]
Despairing, confounded,
He trembles, he glows,
Amidst Rhodope's[14] snows:
See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies;
Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries—
Ah see, he dies!
Yet even in death Eurydice he sung,
Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,
Eurydice the woods,
Eurydice the floods,
Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung.
VII.
Music[15] the fiercest grief can charm,
And fate's severest rage disarm;
Music can soften pain to ease,
And make despair and madness please:
Our joys below it can improve,
And antedate the bliss above.
This the divine Cecilia found,
And to her Maker's praise confined the sound.
When the full organ joins the tuneful choir,
The immortal powers incline their ear;
Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,
While solemn airs improve the sacred fire;
And angels lean from heaven to hear.
Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell,
To bright Cecilia greater power is given;
His numbers raised a shade from hell,
Hers lift the soul to heaven.[16]
NOTES.
This poem was written in 1708 at the suggestion of Sir Richard Steele; it was set to music by Maurice Greene, and in 1730 was performed at the public commemoration at Cambridge. Its model is Dryden's famous ode, "Alexander's Feast," of which Pope was a warm admirer (see page [159]). Dr. Johnson says; "In his 'Ode on St. Cecilia's Day' Pope is generally confessed to have miscarried; yet he has miscarried only as compared with Dryden, for he has far outgone other competitors. Dryden's plan is better chosen; history will always take stronger hold of the passions than fable: the passions excited by Dryden are the pleasures and pains of real life; the scene of Pope is laid in imaginary existence; Pope is read with calm acquiescence, Dryden with turbulent delight; Pope hangs upon the ear, Dryden finds the passes of the mind. Both the odes want the essential constituent of metrical compositions, the stated recurrence of settled numbers. . . . If Pope's ode be particularly inspected, it will be found that the first stanza consists of sounds, well chosen, indeed, but only sounds. The second consists of hyperbolical commonplaces, easily to be found, and, perhaps, without much difficulty to be as well expressed. In the third, however, there are numbers, images, harmony, and vigor not unworthy the antagonist of Dryden. Had all been like this—but every part cannot be the best. The next stanzas place and detain us in the dark and dismal regions of mythology; . . . we have all that can be performed by elegance of diction or sweetness of versification; but what can form avail without better matter? The last stanza again refers to commonplaces. The conclusion is too evidently modelled by that of Dryden; and it may be remarked that both end with the same fault—the comparison of each is literal on one side and metaphorical on the other. Poets do not always express their own thoughts. Pope, with all this labor in the praise of music, was ignorant of its principles and insensible of its effects."
St. Cecilia, the Christian Polyhymnia and patron saint of sacred music, is said to have suffered martyrdom about the year 230. In Chaucer's "Seconde Nonnes Tale"—which is an almost literal translation of the "Legenda Aurea," written in the thirteenth century—it is related that, on account of Cecilia's spotless purity, an angel came down from heaven to be her guardian. Her husband, Valerian, was also the recipient of angelic favors, for
"This angel had of roses and lilie
Corones two, the which he bare in honde,
And first to Cecile, as I understonde,
He yaf that on, and after gan he take
That other to Valerian hire make."
How and when Cecilia was first recognized as the patron saint of music does not appear. The legend only says, that
"While the organs maden melodie,
To God alone thus in hire hert song she;
'O Lord, my soule and eke my body gie
Unwemmed, lest that I confounded be.'"
There is also a tradition in the church that St. Cecilia was the inventor of the organ. Dryden calls her "inventress of the vocal frame" (see page [164]). The origin of this musical instrument is not known, but the first organs used in Italy are said to have been brought thither from Greece. Some of the Roman churches are known to have had them in use in the seventh century, but they were not common until several hundred years later. The festival of St. Cecilia occurs on the 22d of November.
[1.] ye Nine. The nine Muses: (1) Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry; (2) Clio, the Muse of history; (3) Euterpe, the Muse of lyric poetry; (4) Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy; (5) Terpsichore, the Muse of choral dance and song; (6) Erato, the Muse of erotic poetry; (7) Polyhymnia, the Muse of the sublime hymn; (8) Urania, the Muse of astronomy; (9) Thalia, the Muse of comedy and idyllic poetry. The custom of invoking the Muses, at the beginning of poems, is derived from Homer:
"Of Peleus' son, Achilles, sing, O Muse."
—Iliad, I, 1.
"Tell me, O Muse, of that sagacious man
Who, having overthrown the sacred town
Of Ilium, wandered far," etc.
—Odyssey, I, 1.
Milton invokes the
"heavenly Muse that on the secret top
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire
That shepherd," etc.
—Paradise Lost, I, 1.
[2.] Observe how, in the sixteen lines following, the sound is made in some measure to be "an echo to the sense."
[3.] equal temper know. Evenness of disposition acquire. The music of Timotheus had an opposite effect on Alexander. See "Alexander's Feast."
[4.] assuasive. Moderating.
[5.] the Thracian raised his strain. Orpheus was a Thracian, the son of Œagrus and the Muse Calliope. Apollo gave him a lyre, and the Muses instructed him in its use; and so sweet was the music which he drew from it that the wild beasts were enchanted and the trees and rocks moved from their places to follow the sound. When Jason and his followers, the Argonauts, were unable to launch their ship Argo, Orpheus played his lyre, and the vessel glided into the sea, while her "kindred trees descended" from the slopes of the mountain (Pelion) and followed her into "the main."
[6.] demi-gods. Half-gods; heroes. Among the Argonauts were Hercules, Castor and Pollux, Theseus, Peleus, Nestor, and others similarly renowned.
[7.] infernal bounds. Boundaries of hell. The wife of Orpheus was a nymph named Eurydice. She having died from the bite of a serpent, the sweet musician followed her into the infernal regions. He begged of Pluto that his wife might return with him to the earth, but his prayer was granted only upon condition that he should not look back upon her until both had safely passed the gates between Hades and the upper world. The poet tells the rest of the story.
Phlegethon. A river of hell in which flowed fire instead of water.
[8.] See Song of Solomon viii. 6: "Love is strong as death."
[9.] shady forms. Departed spirits were called "shades," because they were supposed to be perceptible sometimes to the sight but never to the touch. See "[heroes' armed shades]," below.
[10.] Sisyphus. See note 18, page [147].
Ixion. King of the Lapithæ. As a punishment for ingratitude to Zeus, his hands and feet were chained to a wheel which was always in motion.
Furies. See note 20, page [167].
[11.] hell. The powers of hell—or, as he explains below, Proserpine, the queen of the infernal regions. Styx. The principal river of hell, around which it flows seven—not nine—times.
[12.] See Milton's "L'Allegro," 135:
"Lap me in soft Lydian airs,
Married to immortal verse, . . .
That Orpheus' self may heave his head
From golden slumber on a bed
Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear
Such strains as would have won the ear
Of Pluto to have quite set free
His half-regain'd Eurydice."
[13.] Orpheus's grief for the loss of Eurydice caused him to treat with contempt the Thracian women among whom he dwelt, and they in revenge tore him to pieces, under the excitement of their Bacchanalian orgies. His head was given by the Hebrus to the sea, and finally carried to the island of Lesbos, where it was buried. See Milton's "Lycidas," 58:
"What could the Muse herself that Orpheus bore,
The Muse herself for her enchanting son,
Whom universal nature did lament,
When by the rout that made the hideous roar,
His gory visage down the stream was sent,
Down the swift Hebrus to the Lesbian shore?"
See, also, "Paradise Lost," VII, 32:
"The barbarous dissonance
Of Bacchus and his revellers, the race
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian bard
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had ears
To rapture, till the savage clamor drown'd
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse defend
Her son."
[14.] Rhodope. A range of mountains in Thrace, sacred to Bacchus. Hæmus was another range extending from Rhodope, on the west, to the Black Sea, on the east.
[15.] Music. Compare what Pope says of music with:
"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."
—Congreve, The Mourning Bride.
"O Music! sphere-descended maid,
Friend of pleasure, wisdom's aid!"
—Collins, The Passions.
"Soft is the music that would charm forever."
—Wordsworth, Sonnets.
[16.] Compare these lines with the four which end Dryden's "Alexander's Feast."
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE.
Alexander Pope was born in London in 1688. He had some instruction at home, and was afterwards sent, first to a Roman Catholic seminary near Winchester, then to another in London. "This," he said, "was all the teaching I ever had, and God knows it extended a very little way. When I had done with my priests, I took to reading by myself, for which I had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm, especially for poetry: and in a few years I had dipped into a very great number of the English, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets." He was small of stature and deformed, and his ill health made him peevish, irritable, and selfish. Yet his rare intellectual abilities and the deserved success of his earlier poetry secured for him the friendship of many of the most influential men of the time. Bolingbroke declared that he never knew a man more tenderly devoted to his friends; and Warburton said, "He is as good a companion as poet, and, what is more, appears to be a good man."
Pope's "Essay on Criticism" was published in 1711; the "Rape of the Lock" in 1714; his translation of Homer's "Iliad" in 1715-18, and of the "Odyssey" in 1726; the "Dunciad" in 1728; the "Essay on Man" in 1732. A revised and enlarged version of the "Dunciad" was published in 1742. The latter part of Pope's life was spent at his country-seat of Twickenham, which he enlarged and beautified from the proceeds of his translation of Homer. He died in 1744.
"Pope is our greatest master in didactic poetry," says Stopford Brooke, "not so much because of the worth of the thoughts as because of the masterly form in which they are put."
"In two directions," says Mark Pattison, "in that of condensing and pointing his meaning, and in that of drawing the utmost harmony of sound out of the couplet, Pope carried versification far beyond the point at which it was when he took it up. The matter which he worked up into his verse has a permanent value, and is indeed one of the most precious heirlooms which the eighteenth century has bequeathed us."
Other Poems to be Read: The Rape of the Lock; The Dying Christian to his Soul; The Universal Prayer; Pastorals; Windsor Forest.
References: Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Stephen's Hours in a Library; De Quincey's Literature of the Eighteenth Century; Lowell's My Study Window; Pope (English Men of Letters), by Leslie Stephen.
