Hook and one of his friends happened to come to a bridge. "Do you know who built this bridge?" said he to Hook. "No, but if you go over you'll be tolled."
[From the December number of Graham's Magazine.]
TO A CELEBRATED SINGER.
BY R.H. STODDARD.
OFT have I dreamed of music rare and fine,
The wedded melody of lute and voice,
Divinest strains that made my soul rejoice,
And woke its inner harmonies divine.
And where Sicilia smooths the ruffled seas,
And Tempe hallows all its purple vales,
Thrice have I heard the noble nightingales,
All night entranced beneath the gloomy trees;
But music, nightingales, and all that Thought
Conceives of song is naught
To thy rich voice, which echoes in my brain,
And fills my longing heart with a melodious pain!
A thousand lamps were lit—I saw them not—
Nor all the thousands round me like a sea,
Life, Death and Time, and all things were forgot;
I only thought of thee!
Meanwhile the music rose sublime and strong,
But sunk beneath thy voice which rose alone,
Above its crumbled fragments to thy throne,
Above the clouds of Song.
Henceforth let Music seal her lips, and be
The silent Ministrant of Poesy;
For not the delicate reed that Pan did play
To partial Midas at the match of old,
Nor yet Apollo's lyre, with chords of gold,
That more than won the crown he lost that day;
Nor even the Orphean lute, that half set free—
Oh why not all?—the lost Eurydice—
Were fit to join with thee;
Much less our instruments of meaner sound,
That track thee slowly o'er enchanted ground,
Unfit to lift the train thy music leaves,
Or glean around its sheaves!
I strive to disentangle in my mind
Thy many-knotted threads of softest song,
Whose memory haunts me like a voiceless wind,
Whose silence does it wrong.
No single tone thereof, no perfect sound
Lingers, but dim remembrance of the whole;
A sound which was a Soul.
The Soul of sound diffused an atmosphere around
So soft, so sweet, so mellow, rich and deep!
So like a heavenly soul's ambrosial breath,
It would not wake but only deepen Sleep
Into diviner Death!
Softer and sweeter than the jealous flute,
Whose soft, sweet voice grew harsh before its own,
It stole in mockery its every tone,
And left it lone and mute;
It flowed like liquid pearl through golden cells,
It jangled like a string of golden bells,
It trembled like a wind in golden strings,
It dropped and rolled away in golden rings;
Then it divided and became a shout,
That Echo chased about,
However wild and fleet,
Until it trod upon its heels with flying feet!
At last it sunk and sunk from deep to deep,
Below the thinnest word,
And sunk till naught was heard,
But charméd Silence sighing in its sleep!
Powerless and mute beneath thy mighty spell,
My heart was lost within itself and thee,
As when a pearl is melted in its shell,
And sunken in the sea!
I sunk, and sunk beneath thy song, but still
I thirsted after more, the more I sank;
A flower that drooped with all the dew it drank,
But still upheld its cup for Heaven to fill;
My inmost soul was drunk with melody,
Which thou didst pour around,
To crown the feast of sound,
And lift to every lip, but chief to me,
Whose spirit uncontrolled,
Drained all the fiery wine and clutched its cup of gold!
Would I could only hear thee once again,
But once again, and pine into the air,
And fade away with all this hopeless pain,
This hope divine, and this divine despair!
If we were only Voices, if our minds
Were only voices, what a life were ours!
My soul would woo thee in the vernal winds,
And thine would answer me in summer showers,
At morn and even, when the east and west
Were bathed in floods of purple poured from Heaven,
We would delay the Morn upon its nest,
And fold the wings of Even!
All day we'd fly with azure wings unfurled,
And gird a belt of Song about the world;
All night we'd teach the winds of night a tune,
While charméd oceans slept beneath a yellow moon!
And when aweary grown of earthly sport,
We'd wind our devious flight from star to star,
Till we beheld the palaces afar,
Where Music holds her court.
Entered and beckoned up the aisles of sound,
Where starry melodies are marshaled round,
We'd kneel before her throne with eager dread,
And when she kissed us melt in trances deep,
While angels bore us to her bridal bed,
And sung our souls asleep!