sorrow,’ that mystic longing for the Infinite,
which is the inner voice of every created heart.
If he could not find the heaven sense of the
tones, he found their earthly meaning, and
caused them to repeat or suggest every joy and sorrow
of which our nature is capable. He forced the
heaven tongue to become human, while it retained
its divine. Without a model or external
archetype, he formed his realm and divined its changing
limits; wide enough to contain all that is noble, holy
enough to exclude all that is low or profane.
He forever exorcised the spirits of Evil—the
strong Demons of materialism—from his rhythmed
world. Flinging his spells on the unseen air,
he forced it to breathe his passion, his sighs; he
saddened it with his tears, kindled it with his rapture,
until fired and charged with the electric breath of
the soul, it glowed into an atmosphere of Life, swaying
at will the wild and restless heart. He created
Music, the only universal language, holding
the keys of Memory, and wearing the crown of Hope.
Angelo, strange architect in that dim domain of chaos,
thy creation, fleeting, invisible, and unembodied,
is in perpetual, flow; changeful as the play of clouds,
yet stable as the eternal laws by which they form their
misty towers, their glittering fanes, and foam-crested
pinnacles! Trackless as the wind, yet as powerful,
thy sweet spirit, Music, floats wherever beats the
human heart, for Rhythm rocks the core of life.
Music nerves the soul with strength or dissolves it
in love; she idealizes Pain into soul-touching Beauty;
assuming all garbs, robing herself in all modes, and
moving at ease through every phase of our complicated
existence. White and glittering are her robes,
yet she is no aristocrat. She disdains not to
soothe the weary negro in his chains, or to rock the
cradle of the child of shame, as the betrayed and forsaken
girl murmurs broken-hearted lullabies around the young
‘inheritor of pain.’ She is with
the maiden in the graceful mazes of the gay Mazourka;
she inflames the savage in the barbaric clang of the
fierce war-dance; or marks the measured tramp of the
drilled soldiery of civilization. She is in the
court of kings; she makes eloquent the ripe lip of
the cultured beauty; she chants in the dreary cell
of the hermit; she lightens the dusty wallet of the
wanderer. She glitters through the dreams of the
Poet; she breathes through the direst tragedies of
noblest souls. On—on she floats through
the wide world, everywhere present, everywhere welcome,
refining, and consecrating our dull life from the Baptismal
Font to the Grave!


