With not a friend to close his dying eyes.”
We too muse mournfully perplexed o’er all this sorry scheme of things and mingle our tears with those which thus perplexedly flowed so long ago:
“With downcast 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.”
Lyre of old Timotheus, wizard violin, symphony concert—for the hour at least, we are what you make us, and whither you lead we follow. Sadness, remorseful sorrow-love, youth and beauty caught coiled in icy death—are these, as Poe asserts, the essential elements of supreme beauty? Poe’s magically beautiful Lenore, Raven, Ullalume, Annabel Lee confirm the poet-critic’s dictum. Love in sorrow, beauty in death, mutability, vicissitude are the dominant chords in music, in literature, and in life.
But reaction follows depression, and violent activity succeeds to passivity. And this the old musician knew who played so well upon the all too humanly receptive heart of Alexander. The wail of the Grecian ghosts “that in battle were slain and unburied remain inglorious on the plain” call for vengeance and point out the abodes of the Persian gods.
Thais leads the way, and Alexander, drunk with wine and with the madness of music, follows whither she leads him; and soon the temples of the gods, the palaces of the Persian kings, the city Persepolis—are in crackling flame.