he was an insignificant drummer enough, but his music afforded us a prime and leisure hour, and we felt that we were in season wholly.  These simple sounds related us to the stars.  Ay, there was a logic in them so convincing that the combined sense of mankind could never make me doubt their conclusions.  I stop my habitual thinking, as if the plough had suddenly run deeper in its furrow through the crust of the world.  How can I go on, who have just stepped over such a bottomless skylight in the bog of my life.  Suddenly old Time winked at me,—­Ah, you know me, you rogue,—­and news had come that IT was well.  That ancient universe is in such capital health, I think undoubtedly it will never die.  Heal yourselves, doctors; by God, I live.

Then idle Time ran gadding by
And left me with Eternity alone;
I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the verge of sight,—­

I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Something to which we are allied, at once our maker, our abode, our destiny, our very Selves; the one historic truth, the most remarkable fact which can become the distinct and uninvited subject of our thought, the actual glory of the universe; the only fact which a human being cannot avoid recognizing, or in some way forget or dispense with.

It doth expand my privacies
To all, and leave me single in the crowd.

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid, and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while.

Now chiefly is my natal hour,
And only now my prime of life. 
I will not doubt the love untold,
Which not my worth nor want hath bought,
Which wooed me young and wooes me old,
And to this evening hath me brought.

What are ears? what is Time? that this particular series of sounds called a strain of music, an invisible and fairy troop which never brushed the dew from any mead, can be wafted down through the centuries from Homer to me, and he have been conversant with that same aerial and mysterious charm which now so tingles my ears?  What a fine communication from age to age, of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the aspirations of ancient men, even such as were never communicated by speech, is music!  It is the flower of language, thought colored and curved, fluent and flexible, its crystal fountain tinged with the sun’s rays, and its purling ripples reflecting the grass and the clouds.  A strain of music reminds me of a passage of the Vedas, and I associate with it the idea of infinite remoteness, as well as of beauty and serenity, for to the senses that is farthest from us which addresses the greatest depth within us.  It teaches us again and again to trust the remotest and finest as the divinest instinct, and makes a dream our only real experience.  We feel a sad cheer when we hear it, perchance because we that hear are not one with that which is heard.

        Therefore a torrent of sadness deep,
        Through the strains of thy triumph is heard to sweep.