| Citation |
NHG-P.772.025
27 Mar 1772:41 (805)
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE COXCOMB.
A coxcomb once in Handel's parlour found,
A Grecian lyre, and try'd to make it sound,
O'er the fine stop his awkward fist he flings,
And rudely presses on the classic strings;
Awaken'd discord shrieks, and scolds, and raves,
Wild as the dissonance of wind and waves,
Loud as a Wapping mob at midnight bawls,
Harsh as ten chariots rolling round St. Pauls,
And hoarser far than all the ecstatic race,
Whose drunken origin stunn'd the wilds of Thrace,
Friend, quoth the sage, that fine machine contains
Exacter numbers and diviner strains;
Strains, such as once could build the Theban wall
And stop the mountain torrent in its fall:
But yet, to awake them, rouze them, and inspire,
Also a fine hunger, and a touch of fire;
A feeling soul whose all expressive pow'rs
Can copy nature as she sinks or fears:
And, just, alike to passion, time, and place
Refine correctness in a case and grace:
He said--and, flying o'er each quiv'ring wire
Spread his light hand, and swept it on the lyre,
Quick to his touch the lyre began to glow,
The sound to kindle, and the air to flow,
Deep as the mourners of the falling floods,
Sweet to the warbles of the vocal woods:
The list'ning passions hear, and sink, and rise,
As the nice harmony or swells, or dies:
The pulse of avarice forgets to move,
A purer rapture fills the breast of love;
Devotion lifts to heaven a holier eye,
And bleeding play heaves a softer sigh.
Life has its ease, amusement, joy, and fire,
Hid is itself as music in the lyre;
And, like the lyre, will all its pow'rs impart,
When touch'd and manag'd by the hand of art;
But has mankind, like Handel's fool, destroy,
Through rage and ignorance, the strain of joy;
Irregularly will the passions roll
Through nature's finest instrument, the soul:
While men of sense, with Handel's happier skill,
Correct the taste, and harmonize the will,
Teach their affections like his notes to flow,
Not rais'd too high, nor ever sunk too low;
Till every virtue, measur'd and refin'd,
As for the concert of the master mind,
Waits in its kindred sounds and pours along
Th' according music of the moral song.
|