But Jubal, wise and gentle, ’tis for thee
That we would raise to life the giant shades
That lived and loved, and sinned and wept and died
Ere Heaven’s great tears had washed away the crime
That stained the beauty of the early earth;
And Enoch, mistress of primeval Art,
Lay, the dead mistress of a drownèd world.
What was thy year, thy month, thy day of birth,
That we may mark it in our Calendar,
“On this day, in a year before the Flood,
Jubal was born, Inventor of the Harp?”
Where shall we seek this knowledge? Of the stars?
’Tis said by some our hearts and brains depend
Upon the union in their mystic dance
They happen to be forming at the hour
When we are born. Then we shall ask the stars.
For they may recollect the year and hour
They formed that wondrous figure when the power
Of music touched the soul of man
For the first time, and if they can,
’Twas then that Jubal’s life began!
Sibyl-stars, that sing the chorus
Of the life that lies before us
As we open mortal eyes!
Strange phrenologists of Heaven,
That infuse the spirit-leaven
Into nascent, infant brains,
That can make them dull or wise,
Forging subtle mental chains
That must bind us until death,
As ye calmly glitter o’er us,
When we draw our primal breath!
Mixing qualities together,
Just according to the weather,
Just according to the season,
And the point of daily time,
Noon or even, night or morn,
That we happen to be born,
For some sage, sidereal reason,
Which some sophomores call “chance,”
Some the “force of circumstance!”
Tell, O fatal stars, sublime,
What the swelling of the chime
Into which you wove your dance,
What the day and what the hour,
Was so happy as to dower
Earth with Music’s heavenly power!
Tell the day of Jubal’s birth,
Day of Jubilee to earth.
Was the “music of the spheres”
Audible to mortal ears?
Did the winds of Heaven sing
Till the forests clapped their hands?
Did the ocean, heralding,
Bear the tidings to all lands,
Whispering, “Rejoice, rejoice,”
Till the earth, unprisoning
All her sounds, became a Voice?
As the soaring of his wing
When the distant eagle moves,
Wakes to life the silent groves,
At the coming of their king!
Sibyl-stars, was this the way
That Earth greeted Jubal’s day?
In those far shadowy years before the Flood
Jubal was born, and this is all we know;
Born in the land where Cain, in solitude
And occupation sought to hide his woe
Born with a gift, well-used, of sin the foe,
A heaven-sent harbinger of promised good.
Oh! was not Adah happy in her boy?
Oh! who could tell the secret of her joy,
When, with a mother’s love, she pierced the veil
That childhood draws round genius, lest it fail
In its high aim, by adulation fed,
And only feel the poison, when ’tis dead?
And Lamech, first of bards, whose kindred art
Would welcome her sweet sister, watched his son
As day by day he saw the promise start
Towards accomplishment. Yet neither one,
Father nor mother, knew as yet the prize
For which they waited with such anxious eyes.
They saw that he was not of common mould:
His quiet thoughtfulness, his pensive ways,
His listening oft as to a story told,
With side-turned head, and distant, earnest gaze,
Told of some god-like purpose in his brain,
Though what it was they asked themselves in vain.
So Jubal grew in those far, shadowy years
Before the Flood; and so the music grew
Within his soul. The common air to him
Was as a constant feast; its slightest touch
Was joy to which all other joy was pain.
The first sensations of his infancy
Were blent with it. His mother’s tender sighs,—
Half sighs, half laughter,—as she looked on him,
Wondering what sort of man he should become,
Were like the breath of angels to his ear;
And when his father’s mighty voice came forth,
Majestic, through its bearded doors, he hushed
The tremulous beatings of his heart to hear.
And when his brother Jabal went away,
And there were sounds of sorrow in his home,
(And he wept too, though hardly knowing why)
He treasured up the sounds as precious things,
Until they seemed a portion of his life.
So did he gather all the tones of love
And joy and grief, by strange instinctive power;
And by and by, how anger wounds the air,
And all the passions of the fallen heart
That Satan hissed into the ear of Eve,
He sadly learned; and yet with balanced sense,
His great, high gift, he traced through all the tones
The woman struggling with her serpent-foe,
And desperate yearnings for lost innocence.