Song of Songs

“ As they recalled the stupendous efforts of the greatest human minds, they discerned the principle of melody as they heard the songs of heaven which gave them all the sensations of color, perfume, and thought, and reminded them of the innumerable details of all the creations, as an earthly song can revive the slenderest memories of love. ”

“ One hundred songs and eighty-five
Are found in songbooks, perfect, pure,
With all accessories complete,
Unblemished in their phrasing sure.
On earth is nothing nobler found,
Nor yet in heaven, than vocal song ”

“ Their sleep with brighter thoughts than wake the dove
To music, when the hillside winds resume
The marriage-song of heather-flower and broom
And all the joy thereof.
⁠And hate the song too taught him: hate of all
That brings or holds in thrall
Of spirit or flesh, free-born ere God began,
The holy body and sacred soul of man. ”

“ The globe of poets then, The choir of angel-men, Each sing a different song, That doth to each belong. Yet the songs one and all, Are of a single call. And make one body free, Doth with itself agree. Then in society. Rises an anthem high, 'Tis as a perfume cast From all flowers far and fast ; A STRANGE BOOK 359 And every fibre heaves With perfume in its leaves, And every part doth thrill With perfume from its will. But when men sing on earth, Song hath no heavenly birth. ”

“ To the scholastics of the middle ages the Song of Songs seemed an unfathomable abyss of mysticism, into whose depths they could dive as deeply as their speculative minds and fertile imaginations prompted them. ”

“ Purely lyrical pieces are from their nature short, and fall into several divisions, which are again subdivided into psalms and songs. Passion, genius, a teeming brain, a palpitating heart, and a soul on fire, are necessary to lyrical composition. The poetry that lives among the people, must indeed be simple—but the simplest feelings are the deepest, and when adequately expressed, are immortal. The song-writer and the psalmist are equally divine; and the rich and noble melodies which they send abroad from their resounding lyres, the world claims as an inheritance. ”

“ Thus, spontaneous births of the instinct for love and song, undergoing countless modifications in passing from mouth to mouth, until the right form has been found at last, and sifted by the taste of generation after generation, these little songs have formed a really beautiful collection of verse, reflecting in their ardour, graceful fancy and purity of sentiment, the best characteristics of the race from which they sprung. ”

“ Are we sure that nothing lives of the music you mourn? It may live on [Pg 43] the lips of the people, in those Old-World songs whose cause we cannot trace, yet which come sweet and fresh transmitted to every generation. How often we hear some nameless melody echo down a country-side! the singers cannot tell you whence it came; they only know their mothers sang it by their cradles, and they will sing it by their children's. But in the past the song had its birth in genius. ”

“ Because thou hast set thine heart to sing, and sold
Life and life's love for song, God's living gold;
Because thou hast given thy flower and fire of youth
To feed men's hearts with visions, truer than truth ”

“ "New voices come to me where'er I roam, My heart too widens with its widening home: But song grows weaker, and the heart must break For lack of voice, or fingers that can wake The lyre's full answer; nay, its chords were all Too few to meet the growing spirit's call. The former songs seem little, yet no more Can soul, hand, voice, with interchanging lore Tell what the earth is saying unto me: The secret is too great, I hear confusedly. ”

“ To soothe the aching brain.
The song that seemed to softly float,
From soul-lands far above,
When mother played the prelude
To the deathless hymn of love.
Some olden, golden, lovelit song,
Forever fresh and young ”

“ None the less, however, must every song possess not so much a revelation of the personality of the singer as a certain community of sentiment, which meets with response from all sides; which excites in others a like emotion and so, too, passes from mouth to mouth. Songs which are not generally current as such in their time are seldom of the genuine stamp. As an essential distinction in the composition of song I will merely emphasize two main aspects which I have already referred to. ”

“ And in the gutter, with agony, he learned the
meaning of song.
Ballads begin and end with the people. You cannot escape that fact. And
therefore, if I wished to collect the ballads of the future, the songs
which will endure into the next century (if there is any song in
the next century) , I should not rake through the contemporary poets, in
the hope of finding gems of lasting brilliance. No. ”

“ "It's the latest popular song," declared the phonograph, speaking in a sulky tone of voice.
"A popular song?"
"Yes. One that the feeble-minded can remember the words of and those ignorant of music can whistle or sing. That makes a popular song popular, and the time is coming when it will take the place of all other songs." ”

“ I sing, not to hear the echo repeat, a shade fainter, my song! I think of light and not of glory! Singing is my fashion of waging war and bearing witness. And if my song is the proudest of songs, it is that I sing clearly to make the day rise clear! ”

“ It seems to be the same in lyric poetry, and when the power does come, then we have the touch which makes it song, as the thrill of the lark, and the ecstasy of the mocking-bird in the tropic night, are songs. The magic may not be prolonged through an entire lyric. It seldom is. It may be only in a single line or in a single verse. It may not be even the highest strain of feeling or nobility of sentiment, and may even carry with it little definite meaning upon analysis. ”

“ A lyre its plaintive sweetness pour'd
Forth on the wild wind's track;
The stormy wanderer jarr'd the chord,
But gave no music back.
—Oh! child of song!
Bear hence to heaven thy fire!
What hop'st thou from the reckless throng ”

“ The spinning songs, which are absolutely improvisations, have, of course, all the inevitable character of abruptness and irregularity, but a charming grace of feeling is often visible through them, and their imagery is as effective as it is spontaneous and natural. ”

“ We are told that many of the spinning songs are improvisations, the girls all standing in a circle, the best spinner or singer in the centre, and that she begins to improvise a song, which is passed on for continuance with the distaff to any one whom she may select. Doubtless these are on familiar themes and with familiar forms of expression, like all folk-songs, but they show the vital spirit of poetry still existing, and the bulk of more elaborate compositions is probably still being added to. ”

“ But in such a struggle the voice of the people could not fail to find expression by the means which the history of mankind has shown to be the most natural expression of emotion and enthusiasm, and their songs, however imperfect, either as literature or popular poetry, are the most genuine expression of the feelings and thoughts which filled their hearts and minds, and have a genuineness which informs the rude or inadequate words, and are a most important illustration of the history of that tremendous conflict. ”

“ "Listen to that song, and learn it!
Half my kingdom would I give,
As I live,
If by such songs you would earn it! ”

“ He regards this Song as “a pastoral eclogue, or a succession of eclogues, representing, in the vivid colour of Asiatic rural scenery, with a splendour of artificial decoration, the honourable loves of a newly married bride and bridegroom, with some other interlocutors.”122
1839. The controversy between Drs. Pye Smith and Bennett123 about the Song of Songs produced a salutary effect, inasmuch as it added considerably to the number of those who in this country defended the literal interpretation. A version of Chap. ii. ”

“ The following specimen of the Targum, on the first chapter of this Song, will give the reader an idea of the way in which the paraphrase develops the allegorical construction of this book.
1. The Song of Songs, &c.—The songs and praises which Solomon the prophet, King of Israel, sang, by the spirit of prophecy, before God, the Lord of the whole world. Ten songs were sung in this world, but this song is the most celebrated of them all. ”

“ The long chronicles of the Cid, and the ballad narratives of the exploits of the heroes of the great struggles for the expulsion of the Moors, form in themselves a rich body of national poetry, but they are supplemented by an immense number of episodical ballads relating to events in national history, and lyrical poems and songs expressing the strong feeling and intellectual energy of the people. ”

“ Let any one examine the Song, and then muse over these facts, recollecting that Solomon is, in the opening of the poem itself, said to be the writer. Was ever such a human love-song composed by mortal, since man either loved or wrote verses? What writer, with the feelings, or the reason, of a man, would begin a poem on his fair one by describing her as courting him? ”

“ The curious reader must consult the Commentary itself to see how this extraordinary mode of exposition is carried through the book. [90]
1778. About two years after the publication of the deciphered hieroglyphics of this Song, the allegorical interpretation sustained some most severe blows from the eminently pious and celebrated poet Herder. He denounced the allegorisers as violating common sense, and the established laws of language, and maintained that this Song celebrated true and chaste love in its various stages. ”

“ But none have as yet been discovered, or are likely to be, which have a stronger power of original poetry, passion, and pathos, or which reveal a more vigorous and noble native genius than the ballads and songs which were produced within the limits of the little province between the Grampians and the Border. ”

“ So there must be the element of reality in their defects before the folk-songs can be accepted as really genuine, and it adds a power and even a literary effect to them, which in its peculiar flavor the most accomplished literary art cannot produce. We seem to hear the speech of living men, to feel the thoughts of simple hearts through the imperfect utterance, and to experience all the flavor of actual and homely life. ”

“ The genuine sea songs differ from the shanties in that they had a definite poetical purpose to tell a story or express emotion, and were not merely words strung together to give voice to a rhythm of labor. ”

“ Hath not the clear wind borne or seemed to bear
A song wherein all earth and heaven and sea
Were molten in one music made of thee
To enforce us, O our sister of the shore,
Look once in heart back landward and adore?
For songless were we sea-mews, yet had we
More joy than all things joyful of thee—more,
Haply, than all things happiest; nay, save thee,
In thy strong rapture of imperious joy
Too high for heart of sea-borne bird or boy,
What living things were happiest if not we?
But knowing not love nor change nor wrath nor wrong,
No more we knew of song. ”

“ Bearing the wings of the soul aloft
From earth and its shadows dim;
Soothing the breast with a sound as soft
As a dream, or a seraph's hymn;
Evoking the solemnest hopes and fears
From our being's higher part;
Dimming the eyes with radiant tears
That flow from a spell bound heart?
Do they want a song that is only a song,
With no mystical meanings rife?
Or a music that solemnly moves along —
The undertone of a life!
Well, then, I'll sing, though I know no art,
Nor the poet's rhymes nor rules —
A melody moves through my aged heart
Not learned from the books or schools ”

“ Shakespeare—him too, whom sea-like ages sever,
As waves divide men's eyes from lights upholden
To landward, from our songs that find him never,
Seeking, though memory fire and hope embolden—
Him too this one song found,
And raised at its sole sound
Up from the dust of darkling dreams and olden
Legends forlorn of breath,
Up from the deeps of death,
Ulysses: him whose name turns all songs golden,
The wise divine strong soul, whom fate
Could make no less than change and chance beheld him great. ”

“ When at last he fell into a sleep or trance, and the vision came, of bird, or beast, or cloud, bringing with it a cadence, this song became ever after the medium of communication between the man and the mysterious power typified in his vision; and by it he summoned help and strength in the hour of his need.
In this manner all mystery songs originated,—the songs sung when healing plants were gathered and when the medicine was administered; when a man set his traps or hunted for game; when he desired to look into the future or sought supernatural guidance, or deliverance from impending danger. ”

“ At harvest time in our country I hear, or I imagine I hear, a sort of chorus rising over all the hills, and I meet no man who is not, deep down within him, a singer! So song follows work: so art grows out of life! ”

“ Some are music and some are words, and some, like prayers, are feeling. The real song is in the thrush's heart, not in the silvery rain of sound that comes from the green boughs in Spring. When you open the door of your heart and let all the joy rush out, laughing—then you are making a song. ”

“ Continue as long as thou canst this melody in the gatherings of the beloved; thus may the minds find rest and joy and become in tune with the love of God. When eloquence of expression, beauty of sense and sweetness of composition unite with new melodies the effect is very great, especially if it be the anthem of the verses of oneness and the songs of praise to the Lord of Glory. ”

“ In its original and simplest form, before she had interpolated a verse to express some of her theological ideas, it is the perfect interpretation of a sweet, solemn, and simple thought, the tenderest and purest emotion, breathed in an equally simple, but absolutely perfect melody, that is like the flowing of limpid water, crystal clear and unbroken to the end. The heart of the world has responded, and it has a place like none other in the tongue of song. ”