Ode

“ Perhaps this brief ode was sung as a prelude to the dance, or it may be that the seven lines are only a fragment. This, indeed, is most likely, as we have several odes in the next decade, all said to have been used at the same occasion.
Oh! great wast thou, O king Wû,
Displaying the utmost strength in thy work. ”

“ If I stand not absolutely condemned by my own rules; if I have hit the spirit of ode in general; if I cannot think with Mr. Cowley, that "Music alone, sometimes, makes an excellent ode;"
Versus inopes rerum, nugæque canoræ; if there is any thought, enthusiasm, and picture, which are as the body, soul, and robe of poetry; in a word, if in any degree I have provided rather food for men, than air for wits; I hope smaller faults will meet indulgence for the sake of the design, which is the glory of my country and my king. ”

“ The ode is a product of a single artist, working not naively, but consciously, and employing a highly developed technique. Derived from the Greek verb meaning "to sing," the word "ode" has not changed its meaning since the days of Pindar, except that, as in the case of the word "lyric" itself, we have gradually come to grow unmindful of the original musical accompaniment of the song. Edmund Gosse, in his collection of English Odes, defines the ode as "any strain of enthusiastic and exalted lyrical verse directed to a fixed purpose and dealing progressively with one dignified theme." ”

“ The drama is complete poetry. The ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both. ”

“ The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real. ”

“ Between an isolated view, though fine in its way, and the gradual ascent of a commanding height, there lies all the difference we find in the enjoyment of a single ode and that which we derive from a great poem ”

“ From this general condemnation I wish to defend my poem, or rather my judgment, for I do not intend to discuss or defend my poem in detail, nor to try to explain what I hoped to accomplish when I engaged in the work; it is still further from my intention that anything which I shall say should be taken as applying to the music with which my ode was, far beyond its deserts, honored and beautified. But I am concerned in combating the general proposition that modern music, by virtue of a declamatory method, is able satisfactorily to interpret almost any kind of good poetry. ”

“ He must get the proper tones, the proper rhythms. The colors must not clash. They must blend into a perfect symphony. There is perfume in color even as there is music in perfume. They are all modes of expression. ”

“ She has not even complained of the want of rhyme in it; a circumstance by no means unfavourable to the cause of lyric blank verse; for surely, if a fair reader can endure an ode without bells and chimes, the masculine genius may dispense with them.
142 THE MANNERS. AN ODE.
From the subject and sentiments of this ode, it seems not improbable that the author wrote it about the time when he left the university ”

“ Then, in addition, as we shall see, all modes of emotion that are congruous with this abstract form may by association be poured into its mold, so that the content of music becomes not a mere form of life, but life itself. ”

“ And yet shall Love himself be heard,
Though long deferred, though long deferred:
O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:
Music is Love in search of a word." ”

“ Thirdly, and finally, it is the melody, by virtue of which on these foundations of a beat characterized by rhythmical vitality and of distinctions and movements of harmony itself that the realm of tones is unitedly discharged in a spiritually free mode of expression, and conducts us thereby to the final main section of our subject, which will undertake to consider music in its concrete unity with the spiritual content it is intended to express in beat, harmony, and rhythm. ”

“ We do not find, however, in his works, any proposal to sing, in colors, either at Mass or Vespers, thunder and lightning, landscapes and sunrises, jigs and waltzes, serenades of love-sick swains, the shrieks and gnashing of teeth of devils and lost souls, as our modern musicians have done with their musical coloring. ”

“ They arouse in some beholders a mood akin to that which a joyous theme in one of Beethoven’s symphonies can arouse,—a mood sweeter than hope itself, or the brightest afterglow of memory; for, while it lasts, the present, flooded with peace and beauty and a nameless ecstacy, satisfies the soul. ”

“ Tragedy, comedy, the epopee, the novel, satire, the madrigal, epigram—or again, lyric drama, comic opera, oratorio, the cantata, song—these correspond to so many aspects under which things can be regarded, painted, or sung, or to so many natural modes of feeling, natural aspirations of the human soul. ”

“ Following on the Odes, we have much written in the same style, more often than not by women, or songs possibly written to be sung by them, always in a minor key, fraught with sadness, yet full of quiet resignation and pathos. ”

“ They found that certain combinations and sequences of tones could be made to convey to the hearer certain more or less definite feelings and ideas: that minor harmonies, in slow and grave rhythms, suggested grief or depression; and that, conversely, harmonies in the major mode, in rapid and energetic movement, suggested gaiety, or jubilation, or relief. ”

“ What though, nor real Voice nor Sound
Amid their radiant Orbs be found!
In Reason's ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious Voice,
For ever singing, as they shine,
The Hand that made us is divine. ”

“ It has been lying there for many years, untouched and unseen, but how beautiful its faded colors, how lovely its wrinkled folds placed there by the hands so long since turned to dust! and how, out of the dim mists of the past, it brings the soft colors and clear outlines of a dear, sweet face! There are tears in your eyes, but more and better than that, there is music in your soul. Every string of your heart is vibrant with melody. ”

“ The music of the spheres played its great harmonies to his fastidious ear; the rhythm of a universal poetry, too exquisite to find expression in mere words, settled upon a mind ever attuned to vastness, till the drab miseries of humanity seemed well-nigh fallen away, and the petty fret of everyday life, the chafing, the disillusion, the smart of pride, the cry of the senses, were as forgotten things.—His soul was filled with visions. ”

“ As the Graces round the throne of Venus, so music, painting, sculpture, wait as handmaids round the throne of Poetry. "They from her [76] golden urn draw light," as planets drink the sunbeams; and in return they array the divinity which created and inspired them, in those sounds, and hues, and forms, through which she is revealed to our mortal senses. The pleasure, the illusion, produced by music, when it is the voice of poetry, is, for the moment, by far the most complete and intoxicating, but also the most transient. ”

“ Tho' the flowers have sunk in death;
So, when pleasure's dream is gone,
Its memory lives in Music's breath.
Music, oh how faint, how weak,
Language fades before thy spell!
Why should Feeling ever speak,
When thou canst breathe her soul so well?
Friendship's balmy words may feign,
Love's are even more false than they;
Oh! 'tis only music's strain
Can sweetly soothe, and not betray. ”

“ The innocence of childhood, the melody of a lute or song-bird as distinguished from the music of an orchestra, the rathe tints of early dawn, cheerful light on shallow streams, the serenity of a simple and untainted nature that has never known the world—many such images occur to the mind while thinking of the sculpture of these men. ”

“ As his own white plume that high amid death
Thro' the field has shone—yet moves with a breath!
And oh, how the eyes of Beauty glisten.
When Music has reached her inward soul,
Like the silent stars that wink and listen
While Heaven's eternal melodies roll.
So hither I come
From my fairy home,
And if there's a magic in Music's strain,
I swear by the breath
Of that moonlight wreath
Thy Lover shall sigh at thy feet again.
'Tis dawn—at least that earlier dawn
Whose glimpses are again withdrawn, [312]
As if the morn had waked, and then
Shut close her lids of light again. ”

“ What flexibility of tone Coloured in turn with pathos and cheerfulness but animated from beginning to end with a movement and rhythm that are unique, smooth, facile, lively and “tuney,” the music reflects every aspect of the subject by which it is inspired, the passion of an old man in love—the pathetic and touching aspect, the laughter-provoking and extravagant aspect. ”

“ Not to read the song but ring it, like the sea-tone from a shell.
Sometimes, too, it comes and lingers round the strings all still and mute,
Till some lover's trembling fingers draw it living from the lute.
Still, our best is but a vision which a lightning-flash illumes,
Just a gleam of life elysian flung across the voiceless glooms.
Why should gleams perplex and move us? Must the soul still upward grow
To the beauty far above us and the songs no sense may know? ”

“ Which that house and heath and garden made dear to thee erewhile,
Thy remembrance and repentance and deep musings are not free
From the music of two voices, and the light of one sweet smile.
Percy Bysshe Shelley. 1792-1822
618. Music, when Soft Voices die
MUSIC, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap'd for the beloved's bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on. ”

“ I am glad to know that something in what I have written has coloured anew your own thought, or deepened the subtle music that you yourself hear—for no one finds the colour of life and the music of the spirit unless he or she already perceive the one and love the other. ”

“ Of music's richest tones a missing strain,—
A bird-note hushed in the blue summer heaven!
That light is gathered to its Source again,
Though long its radiance will be missed on earth,
That flower, transplanted to a sunnier plain,
Bloometh immortal where no blight has birth;
That missing link gleams in Love's chain above,—
That lost gem sparkles on the Saviour's breast,—
That music-uttrance, tuned to holier love,
Swells richly 'mid the anthems of the blest.
Thank God! there's nothing lost! ”

“ Poetry, painting, and sculpture show us things outside ourselves, joyful or grievous things perhaps, hopeful or desperate or beautiful or ugly things, but still things. But music shows us nothing but the qualities, the disembodied feelings, the passional essences. Let the reader recall for a moment the effects of painting or of poetry, the way in which they present emotion. Is it not always by symbolism, by indirection? Does not the feeling merely exhale from the object instead of constituting the object as it does in music? ”

“ But, as an expression of sentiment, Music still surpasses painting. What it expresses is the soul itself, in its most intimate and profound relations; and this by a sensuous phenomenon, equally invisible, instantaneous, intangible—sound—sonorous vibrations, which resound in the abysses of the soul, and agitate it throughout. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Incapable of feeling the austere emotions of art, I begin to read into the musical forms human emotions of terror and mystery, love and hate, and spend the minutes, pleasantly enough, in a world of turbid and inferior feeling. At such times, were the grossest pieces of onomatopoeic representation—the song of a bird, the galloping of horses, the cries of children, or the laughing of demons—to be introduced into the symphony, I should not be offended. ”

“ That mingled with the splashing noise of founts,
In music such as stirs to passionate thought:
This peerless land was thronged with souls like mine,
Straying from East to South, impelled unseen,
And lost, like mine, in its enchanted vales:—
Souls that conversed apart in pairs, or sang
Low breeze-like airs, more tender than sweet words ”

“ Our glance would seize in passing, sculptured in the living marble of the human body, bits of statuary as beautiful as those of antiquity. We would hear singing in the depths of our souls like music, sometimes gay, more often plaintive, always original, the uninterrupted melody of our interior life. ”

“ All that is involved in the fact of redemption just as fragrance is involved and included in the rose, as harmony is expected to be a part of music and rhythm as well as metre a part of verse and song. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With this, then, as the foundation-tone, running through all the spaces and along all the lines of life, the thoughts, desires, words, and acts must all harmonize with love; and if they do not, if they strike a note that is foreign to its key-tone, it breaks the harmony at once, throwing jars and discords into the music. ”

“ The delicate rain of harmonious notes falling one on another, the strange mystery with which the chords of the instrument repeat and concentrate all the sighs of passion and the woes of feeling, all the inexplicable and marvellous humanity and sympathy with which all perfect music is filled, were heard by her for the first time in their most exquisite forms. ”

“ The splendor, the beauty, the glowing language of the scene, the strains of music, softer and more entrancing than ever swept across her senses,—the very picturesque effect of everything,—varied with every artifice of light and shadow, carried her away, and bore her to an ideal world, where she, too, had her homage of devotion, where her beauty had its worshippers, and she was herself loved. ”