The Illustrated London Reading Book Part 36

Nature! great parent! whose unceasing hand Rolls round the seasons of the changeful year, How mighty, how majestic are thy works!

With what a pleasing dread they swell the soul, That sees astonish'd, and astonish'd sings!

Ye, too, ye winds! that now begin to blow With boisterous sweep, I raise my voice to you.

Where are your stores, ye powerful beings, say, Where your aerial magazines reserved To swell the brooding terrors of the storm?

In what far distant region of the sky, Hush'd in deep silence, sleep ye when 'tis calm?

'Tis done; dread Winter spreads his latest glooms, And reigns tremendous o'er the conquer'd year.

How dead the vegetable kingdom lies!

How dumb the tuneful! Horror wide extends His desolate domain. Behold, fond man!

See here thy pictured life! Pa.s.s some few years Thy flowering spring, thy summer's ardent strength, And sober autumn fading into age, The pale concluding winter comes at last The shuts the scene. Ah! whither now are fled Those dreams of greatness? those unsolid hopes Of happiness? those longings after fame?

Those restless cares? those busy bustling days?

Those gay-spent festive nights? those veering thoughts, Lost between good and ill, that shared thy life?

All now are vanish'd; virtue sole survives, Immortal, never-failing friend of man-- His guide to happiness on high.

THOMSON.

[Ill.u.s.tration: WINTER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AND PALE CONCLUDING WINTER COMES AT LAST, AND SHUTS THE SCENE.]

ON MUSIC.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Letter T.]

There are few who have not felt the charms of music, and acknowledged its expressions to be intelligible to the heart. It is a language of delightful sensations, that is far more eloquent than words: it breathes to the ear the clearest intimations; but how it was learned, to what origin we owe it, or what is the meaning of some of its most affecting strains, we know not.

We feel plainly that music touches and gently agitates the agreeable and sublime pa.s.sions; that it wraps us in melancholy, and elevates us to joy; that it dissolves and inflames; that it melts us into tenderness, and rouses into rage: but its strokes are so fine and delicate, that, like a tragedy, even the pa.s.sions that are wounded please; its sorrows are charming, and its rage heroic and delightful. As people feel the particular pa.s.sions with different degrees of force, their taste of harmony must proportionably vary. Music, then, is a language directed to the pa.s.sions; but the rudest pa.s.sions put on a new nature, and become pleasing in harmony: let me add, also, that it awakens some pa.s.sions which we perceive not in ordinary life. Particularly the most elevated sensation of music arises from a confused perception of ideal or visionary beauty and rapture, which is sufficiently perceivable to fire the imagination, but not clear enough to become an object of knowledge.

This shadowy beauty the mind attempts, with a languis.h.i.+ng curiosity, to collect into a distinct object of view and comprehension; but it sinks and escapes, like the dissolving ideas of a delightful dream, that are neither within the reach of the memory, nor yet totally fled. The n.o.blest charm of music, then, though real and affecting, seems too confused and fluid to be collected into a distinct idea.

Harmony is always understood by the crowd, and almost always mistaken by musicians. The present Italian taste for music is exactly correspondent to the taste for tragi-comedy, that about a century ago gained ground upon the stage. The musicians of the present day are charmed at the union they form between the grave and the fantastic, and at the surprising transitions they make between extremes, while every hearer who has the least remainder of the taste of nature left, is shocked at the strange jargon. If the same taste should prevail in painting, we must soon expect to see the woman's head, a horse's body, and a fish's tail, united by soft gradations, greatly admired at our public exhibitions. Musical gentlemen should take particular care to preserve in its full vigour and sensibility their original natural taste, which alone feels and discovers the true beauty of music.

If Milton, Shakspeare, or Dryden had been born with the same genius and inspiration for music as for poetry, and had pa.s.sed through the practical part without corrupting the natural taste, or blending with it any prepossession in favour of sleights and dexterities of hand, then would their notes be tuned to pa.s.sions and to sentiments as natural and expressive as the tones and modulations of the voice in discourse. The music and the thought would not make different expressions; the hearers would only think impetuously; and the effect of the music would be to give the ideas a tumultuous violence and divine impulse upon the mind.

Any person conversant with the cla.s.sic poets, sees instantly that the pa.s.sionate power of music I speak of, was perfectly understood and practised by the ancients--that the Muses of the Greeks always sung, and their song was the echo of the subject, which swelled their poetry into enthusiasm and rapture. An inquiry into the nature and merits of the ancient music, and a comparison thereof with modern composition, by a person of poetic genius and an admirer of harmony, who is free from the shackles of practice, and the prejudices of the mode, aided by the countenance of a few men of rank, of elevated and true taste, would probably lay the present half-Gothic mode of music in ruins, like those towers of whose little laboured ornaments it is an exact picture, and restore the Grecian taste of pa.s.sionate harmony once more to the delight and wonder of mankind. But as from the disposition of things, and the force of fas.h.i.+on, we cannot hope in our time to rescue the sacred lyre, and see it put into the hands of men of genius, I can only recall you to your own natural feeling of harmony and observe to you, that its emotions are not found in the laboured, fantastic, and surprising compositions that form the modern style of music: but you meet them in some few pieces that are the growth of wild unvitiated taste; you discover them in the swelling sounds that wrap us in imaginary grandeur; in those plaintive notes that make us in love with woe; in the tones that utter the lover's sighs, and fluctuate the breast with gentle pain; in the n.o.ble strokes that coil up the courage and fury of the soul, or that lull it in confused visions of joy; in short, in those affecting strains that find their way to the inmost recesses of the heart,

Untwisting all the chains that tie The hidden soul of harmony.--_Milton_.

USHER.

THE AFFLICTED POOR.

Say ye--oppress'd by some fantastic woes, Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose, Who press the downy couch while slaves advance With timid eye to read the distant glance; Who with sad pray'rs the weary doctor tease, To name the nameless, ever new disease; Who with mock patience dire complaint endure, Which real pain, and that alone, can cure: How would ye bear in real pain to lie, Despised, neglected, left alone to die?

How would ye bear to draw your latest breath, Where all that's wretched paves the way for death?

Such is that room which one rude beam divides, And naked rafters form the sloping sides; Where the vile bands that bind the thatch are seen, And lath and mud are all that lie between, Save one dull pane that coa.r.s.ely patch'd gives way To the rude tempest, yet excludes the day: There, on a matted flock with dust o'erspread, The drooping wretch reclines his languid head!

For him no hand the cordial cup supplies, Nor wipes the tear which stagnates in his eyes; No friends, with soft discourse, his pangs beguile.

Nor promise hope till sickness wears a smile.

CRABBE.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GEORGE CRABBE.]

MIDNIGHT THOUGHTS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Letter T.]

Thou, who didst put to flight Primeval silence, when the morning stars, Exulting, shouted o'er the rising ball: O Thou! whose word from solid darkness struck That spark, the sun, strike wisdom from my soul; My soul which flies to thee, her trust her treasure, As misers to their gold, while others rest: Through this opaque of nature and of soul, This double night, transmit one pitying ray, To lighten and to cheer. Oh, lead my mind, (A mind that fain would wander from its woe,) Lead it through various scenes of life and death, And from each scene the n.o.blest truths inspire.

Nor less inspire my conduct, than my song; Teach my best reason, reason; my best will Teach rect.i.tude; and fix my firm resolve Wisdom to wed, and pay her long arrear; Nor let the phial of thy vengeance, pour'd On this devoted head, be pour'd in vain.

The bell strikes One. We take no note of time But from its loss; to give it then a tongue Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke, I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, It is the knell of my departed hours.

Where are they? with the years beyond the flood!

It is the signal that demands dispatch: How much is to be done! My hopes and fears Start up alarm'd, and o'er life's narrow verge Look down--on what? A fathomless abyss!

A dread eternity! How surely mine!

And can eternity belong to me, Poor pensioner on the bounties of an hour?

How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful is man!

How pa.s.sing wonder He who made him such!

Who center'd in our make such strange extremes-- From different natures, marvellously mix'd: Connexion exquisite! of distant worlds Distinguish'd link in being's endless chain!

Midway from nothing to the Deity; A beam ethereal--sullied and absorpt!

Though sullied and dishonour'd, still divine!

Dim miniature of greatness absolute!

An heir of glory! a frail child of dust!

Helpless immortal! insect infinite!

A worm! a G.o.d! I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost. At home a stranger.

Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, And wondering at her own. How reason reels!

Oh, what a miracle to man is man!

Triumphantly distress'd! what joy! what dread Alternately transported and alarm'd!

What can preserve my life, or what destroy?

An angel's arm can't s.n.a.t.c.h me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there.