And there lay the rider distorted and pale,
With the dew on his brow and the rust on his mail;
And the tents were all silent, the banners alone,
The lances unlifted, the trumpet unblown.
VI.
And the widows of Ashur are loud in their wail,
And the idols are broke in the temple of Baal;
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!
Lord Byron.
UNWRITTEN MUSIC.
1. There is unwritten music. The world is full of it. I hear it every hour that I wake; and my waking sense is surpassed sometimes by my sleeping, though that is a mystery. There is no sound of simple nature that is not music. It is all God's work, and so harmony. You may mingle, and divide, and strengthen the passages of its great anthem; and it is still melody,—melody.
2. The low winds of summer blow over the waterfalls and the brooks, and bring their voices to your ear, as if their sweetness were linked by an accurate finger; yet the wind is but a fitful player; and you may go out when the tempest is up and hear the strong trees moaning as they lean before it, and the long grass hissing as it sweeps through, and its own solemn monotony over all; and the dripple of that same brook, and the waterfall's unaltered bass shall still reach you, in the intervals of its power, as much in harmony as before, and as much a part of its perfect and perpetual hymn.
3. There is no accident of nature's causing which can bring in discord. The loosened rock may fall into the abyss, and the overblown tree rush down through the branches of the wood, and the thunder peal awfully in the sky; and sudden and violent as their changes seem, their tumult goes up with the sound of wind and waters, and the exquisite ear of the musician can detect no jar.
4. I have read somewhere of a custom in the Highlands, which, in connection with the principle it involves, is exceedingly beautiful. It is believed that, to the ear of the dying (which just before death becomes always exquisitely acute,) the perfect harmony of the voices of nature is so ravishing, as to make him forget his suffering, and die gently, as in a pleasant trance. And so, when the last moment approaches, they take him from the close shieling, and bear him out into the open sky, that he may hear the familiar rushing of the streams. I can believe that is not superstition. I do not think we know how exquisitely nature's many voices are attuned to harmony and to each other.