MUSIC.
God is its author, and not man; he laid
The key-note of all harmonies; he planned
All perfect combinations, and he made
Us so that we could hear and understand.
Music. J.A.C. BRAINARD.
There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears:
Their earth is but an echo of the spheres.
Don Juan, Canto XV. LORD BYRON.
With melting airs, or martial, brisk, or grave;
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
The Task, Bk. VI.: Winter Walk at Noon. W. COWPER.
A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly,
Upon the bosom of that harmony,
And sailed and sailed incessantly,
As if a petal from a wild-rose blown
Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone,
And boatwise dropped o' the convex side
And floated down the glassy tide
And clarified and glorified
The solemn spaces where the shadows bide.
The Symphony. S. LANTER.
Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould
Breathe such divine enchanting ravishment?
Sure something holy lodges in that breast,
And with these raptures moves the vocal air
To testify his hidden residence.
How sweetly did they float upon the wings
Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night,
At every fall smoothing the raven down
Of darkness till it smiled.
Comus. MILTON.
Though music oft hath such a charm
To make bad good, and good provoke to harm.
Measure for Measure, Act iv. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.—
That strain again—it had a dying fall:
O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odor.
Twelfth Night, Act i. Sc. 1. SHAKESPEARE.
Where music dwells
Lingering and wandering on, as loath to die,
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality.
Ecclesiastical Sonnets, Pt. III. xliii. W. WORDSWORTH.
Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast,
To soften rooks, or bend a knotted oak.
I've read that things inanimate have moved,
And, as with living souls, have been informed
By magic numbers and persuasive sound.
The Mourning Bride, Act i. Sc. 1. W. CONGREVE.