“Were you happy?”--“Yes.”--“And are you still as happy?”--“Yes. And you?” --“Then, more kisses!”--“Did I stop them, when a million seemed so few?” Hark, the dominant’s persistence till it must be answered to! -- St. 8. The questions in this stanza must be supposed to be caused by the effect upon the revellers of the “plaintive lesser thirds”, the “diminished sixths”, the “commiserating sevenths”, etc., of the preceding stanza. 9. So, an octave struck the answer. Oh, they praised you, I dare say! “Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay! I can always leave off talking when I hear a master play!” 10. Then they left you for their pleasure: till in due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, Death stepped tacitly, and took them where they never see the sun. 11. But when I sit down to reason, think to take my stand nor swerve, While I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve, In you come with your cold music till I creep through every nerve. -- St. 11. While I triumph o’er a secret wrung from nature’s close reserve: the secret of the soul’s immortality. 12. Yes, you, like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned: “Dust and ashes, dead and done with, Venice spent what Venice earned. The soul, doubtless, is immortal--where a soul can be discerned. 13. “Yours for instance: you know physics, something of geology, Mathematics are your pastime; souls shall rise in their degree; Butterflies may dread extinction,--you’ll not die, it cannot be! -- St. 13. The idea is involved in this stanza that the soul’s continued existence is dependent on its development in this life; the ironic character of the stanza is indicated by the merely intellectual subjects named, physics, geology, mathematics, which do not of themselves, necessarily, contribute to SOUL-development. All from the 2d verse of the 12th stanza down to “Dust and ashes” in the 15th, is what the music, “like a ghostly cricket, creaking where a house was burned”, says to the speaker, in the monologue, of the men and women for whom life meant simply a butterfly enjoyment. 14. “As for Venice and her people, merely born to bloom and drop, Here on earth they bore their fruitage, mirth and folly were the crop: What of soul was left, I wonder, when the kissing had to stop? 15. “Dust and ashes!” So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too--what’s become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old. Abt Vogler. (After he has been extemporizing upon the Musical Instrument of his Invention.) 1.