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The air here is full of music, the rich harmonies of many instruments and the voices of the nymphs who sing their choruses to Venus, but his ears are tired of the sounds, and he wishes that he might hear only the sleepy tinkle of the sheep-bells, chiming with the voice of the brook. But more than everything else he thinks of the princess.
"For a year after that I was alone: then Esther Hooper came, and I was not wretched. I have had my share of lovers and friends what girl has not? have had rare treats of music, of books and paintings, and shared their pleasant harmonies with an appreciative soul; and I have been very contented.
But deeper still lay the mystical interpretation. In the world of books he heard the voice of the soul, sometimes lamenting in desolate places, sometimes singing blithely to itself, as a shepherd sings upon a headland, in sight of the blue sea; sometimes there came a thrill of rapture into the voice, when the spirit was filled to the brim with the unclouded joys of the opening world, the scent of flowers, the whispering of foliage in great woods, the sweet harmonies of musical chords, the glance of beloved eyes, or the accents of some desired voice; and then again all this would fade and pale, and the soul would sit wearied out, lamenting its vanished dreams and the delicate delights of the springtime, in some wild valley overhung with dark mountains, under the dreadful and inscrutable eye of God.
I believe that poetry really first took possession of me in that poem, so that afterwards I could not easily mistake the genuineness of its ring, though my ear might not be sufficiently trained to catch its subtler harmonies. This great mountain poem struck some hidden key-note in my nature, and I knew thenceforth something of what it was to live in poetry, and to have it live in me.
She stirred at length; glanced at the windows, at the fire, and rose. A pleasant little sitting-room, furnished in the taste of our time; with harmonies and contrasts of subdued colour, with pictures intelligently chosen, with store of graceful knick-knacks.
Rhythm and rhyme and the harmonies of musical language, the play of fancy, the fire of imagination, the flashes of passion, so hide the nakedness of a heart laid open, that hardly any confession, transfigured in the luminous halo of poetry, is reproached as self-exposure.
Methinks thou hast marked them, and been glad that the old notes were ringing again and the old French lyric measures tripping to thine ancient harmonies, echoing and replying to the Muses of Horace and Catullus. Returning to Nature, poets returned to thee. Thy monument has perished, but not thy music, and the Prince of Poets has returned to his own again in a glorious Restoration.
What was the charm that enchanted the old marbles, charm untold and inconceivable to one who had never seen even the slightest approach to a work of art? Then those glaciers of Switzerland, that grand, unapproachable mixture of beauty and sublimity in her mountains! what would it be to one who could see it? Then what were all those harmonies of which she read, masses, fugues, symphonies?
Napoleon, though Italian in blood and lineage, made himself so French in sympathy and understanding as to be able to play upon the imagination of all France as a great musician plays upon a splendid instrument, with absolute sureness of touch and an ability to extract from it every one of its varied harmonies.
And as he dwelt on the vision he felt harmonies and phrases stirring and singing in his brain, like a choir of awakened birds. Quickly he seized paper and wrote down the theme that flowed out at the point of his pen a reverie full of the haunting magic of quiet waters and woodland sunsets and the gracious innocence of maidenhood. When it was done he felt he must give it a distinctive name.
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