ODE ON ST. CECILIA'S DAY, MDCCVIII. AND OTHER PIECES FOR MUSIC. ODE FOR MUSIC ON ST. CECILIA'S DAY. I. DESCEND, ye Nine! descend and sing; Let the warbling lute complain : Till the roofs all around The shrill echoes rebound: While in more lengthen'd notes and slow, The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow. Hark! the numbers soft and clear, Gently steal upon the ear; Now louder, and yet louder rise, And fill with spreading sounds the skies; Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes, In broken air, trembling, the wild music floats; The strains decay, And melt away, In a dying, dying fall. II. By Music, minds an equal temper know, Or when the soul is press'd with cares, Warriors she fires with animated sounds; Pours balm into the bleeding lover's wounds: Morpheus rouses from his bed, Sloth unfolds her arms and wakes, Intestine war no more our Passions wage, And giddy Factions hear away their rage. III. But when our Country's cause provokes to Arms, So when the first bold vessel dar'd the seas, Each chief his sev'nfold shield display'd, IV. But when thro' all th' infernal bounds, Love, strong as Death, the Poet led Dreadful gleams, Dismal screams, Fires that glow, Shrieks of woe, Sullen moans, Hollow groans, And cries of tortur'd ghosts! But hark! he strikes the golden lyre; Thy stone, O Sisyphus, stands still,' And the pale spectres dance! The Furies sink upon their iron beds, And snakes uncurl'd hang list'ning round their heads. V. By the streams that ever flow, O'er th' Elysian flow'rs; Or Amaranthine bow'rs; Restore, restore Eurydice to life: Oh take the husband, or return the wife! 1 This line is taken from an ode of Cobb.-WARTON. 75 80 eyes: But Beside the fall of fountains, Or where Hebrus wanders, Rolling in Mæanders, All alone, Unheard, unknown, And calls her ghost, Now with Furies surrounded, Despairing, confounded, He trembles, he glows, Amidst Rhodope's snows; See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies; Hark! Hæmus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries— Ah see, he dies! Yet ev'n in death Eurydice he sung, Eurydice still trembled on his tongue, 1C5 110 Eurydice the woods, Eurydice the floods, Eurydice the rocks, and hollow mountains rung. 115 VII. Music the fiercest grief can charm, Music can soften pain to ease, And make despair and madness please : And antedate the bliss above. And to her Maker's praise confin'd the sound. And Angels lean from heav'n to hear. Hers lift the soul to heav'n.' 1 The Ode as here printed was first published in the edition of Pope's Works issued in 1717. It reappears in the edition of 1736, with the statement that it was written in 1708. In 1730 it was re-cast by the poet that it might be set to music, and it is inserted in its new form in a pamphlet entitled "Quæstiones unâ cum Carminibus, in Magnis Comitiis Cantabrigiæ celebratis, 1730," with the following heading: : "An Ode composed for the Public Commencement at Cambridge: on Monday, July the 6th, 1730. At the Musick Act. The words by Alexander Pope, Esq. The Musick by Maurice Green, Doctor in Musick." VOL. IV. POETRY. 120 125 130 It will be seen that a new stanza is inserted after Stanza ii., but that otherwise the Ode is considerably shortened, and thereby improved. It cannot, however, even in its amended form, be considered as one of Pope's happiest performances. He himself told Spence that he was not pleased with it, as compared with Dryden's Ode on the same subject, and indeed neither the theme nor the mode of poetical expression was suited to his genius. The intellectual element always overbalances the emotional in his poetry his lyrical style is wanting in movement and spontaneity. As for his subject, we learn from Sir John Hawkins that, though he de D D |