That this particular series of
sounds called a strain of music, an invisible and fairy troop
which never brushed the dew from any mead, can be wafted down
through the centuries from Homer to me, and he have been
conversant with that same aerial and mysterious charm which now
so tingles my ears? What a fine communication from age to age,
of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the aspirations of ancient
men, even such as were never communicated by speech, is music!
It is the flower of language, thought colored and curved, fluent
and flexible, its crystal fountain tinged with the sun's rays,
and its purling ripples reflecting the grass and the clouds. A
strain of music reminds me of a passage of the Vedas, and I
associate with it the idea of infinite remoteness, as well as of
beauty and serenity, for to the senses that is farthest from us
which addresses the greatest depth within us. It teaches us
again and again to trust the remotest and finest as the divinest
instinct, and makes a dream our only real experience. We feel a
sad cheer when we hear it, perchance because we that hear are not
one with that which is heard.
Therefore a torrent of sadness deep,
Through the strains of thy triumph is heard to sweep.
The sadness is ours. The Indian poet Calidas says in the
Sacontala: "Perhaps the sadness of men on seeing beautiful forms
and hearing sweet music arises from some faint remembrance of
past joys, and the traces of connections in a former state of
existence." As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain
in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The
hero is the sole patron of music. That harmony which exists
naturally between the hero's moods and the universe the soldier
would fain imitate with drum and trumpet. When we are in health
all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in
the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the
dawn. Marching is when the pulse of the hero beats in unison
with the pulse of Nature, and he steps to the measure of the
universe; then there is true courage and invincible strength.
Plutarch says that "Plato thinks the gods never gave men music,
the science of melody and harmony, for mere delectation or to
tickle the ear; but that the discordant parts of the circulations
and beauteous fabric of the soul, and that of it that roves about
the body, and many times, for want of tune and air, breaks forth
into many extravagances and excesses, might be sweetly recalled
and artfully wound up to their former consent and agreement."
Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. It is the
only assured tone. There are in it such strains as far surpass
any man's faith in the loftiness of his destiny. Things are to
be learned which it will be worth the while to learn. Formerly I
heard these
^Rumors from an Aeolian Harp^.
There is a vale which none hath seen,
Where foot of man has never been,
Such as here lives with toil and strife,
An anxious and a sinful life.
There every virtue has its birth,
Ere it descends upon the earth,
And thither every deed returns,
Which in the generous bosom burns.
There love is warm, and youth is young,
And poetry is yet unsung,
For Virtue still adventures there,
And freely breathes her native air.
And ever, if you hearken well,
You still may hear its vesper bell,
And tread of high-souled men go by,
Their thoughts conversing with the sky.
According to Jamblichus, "Pythagoras did not procure for himself
a thing of this kind through instruments or the voice, but
employing a certain ineffable divinity, and which it is difficult
to apprehend, he extended his ears and fixed his intellect in the
sublime symphonies of the world, he alone hearing and
understanding, as it appears, the universal harmony and
consonance of the spheres, and the stars that are moved through
them, and which produce a fuller and more intense melody than
anything effected by mortal sounds."
Travelling on foot very early one morning due east from here
about twenty miles, from Caleb Harriman's tavern in Hampstead
toward Haverhill, when I reached the railroad in Plaistow, I
heard at some distance a faint music in the air like an Aeolian
harp, which I immediately suspected to proceed from the cord of
the telegraph vibrating in the just awakening morning wind, and
applying my ear to one of the posts I was convinced that it was
so. It was the telegraph harp singing its message through the
country, its message sent not by men, but by gods. Perchance,
like the statue of Memnon, it resounds only in the morning, when
the first rays of the sun fall on it. It was like the first lyre
or shell heard on the sea-shore, - that vibrating cord high in the
air over the shores of earth. So have all things their higher
and their lower uses. I heard a fairer news than the journals
ever print. It told of things worthy to hear, and worthy of the
electric fluid to carry the news of, not of the price of cotton
and flour, but it hinted at the price of the world itself and of
things which are priceless, of absolute truth and beauty.
Still the drum rolled on, and stirred our blood to fresh
extravagance that night. The clarion sound and clang of corselet
and buckler were heard from many a hamlet of the soul, and many a
knight was arming for the fight behind the encamped stars.
"Before each van
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears
Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms
From either end of Heaven the welkin burns."
- - - - - - -
Away! away! away! away!
Ye have not kept your secret well,
I will abide that other day,
Those other lands ye tell.
