Melologue
A Short Strain of Music From the Orchestra
There breathes a language known and felt
Far as the pure air spreads its living zone;
Wherever rage can rouse, or pity melt,
That language of the soul is felt and known.
From those meridian plains,
Where oft, of old, on some high tower
The soft Peruvian poured his midnight strains,
And called his distant love with such sweet power,
That, when she heard the lonely lay,
Not worlds could keep her from his arms away,1
To the bleak climes of polar night,
Where blithe, beneath a sunless sky,
The Lapland lover bids his reindeer fly,
And sings along the lengthening waste of snow,
Gayly as if the blessed light
Of vernal Phoebus burned upon his brow;
Oh Music! thy celestial claim
Is still resistless, still the same;
And, faithful as the mighty sea
To the pale star that o’er its realm presides,
The spell-bound tides
Of human passion rise and fall for thee!
Notes
1 “A certain Spaniard, one night late, met an Indian woman in the streets of Cozco, and would have taken her to his home, but she cried out, ‘For God’s sake, Sir, let me go; for that pipe, which you hear in yonder tower, calls me with great passion, and I cannot refuse the summons; for love constrains me to go, that I may be his wife, and he my husband.’”—“Garcilasso de la Véga,” in Sir Paul Ryeaut’s translation.