"The music of the spheres! list, my Mariana!" --_Shakespeare_, _Pericles_, Act v, sc. 1. "There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st But in his motion like an angel sings Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims." --_Shakespeare_, _Merchant of Venice_, Act v, sc. 1. "If Nature thunder'd in his opening ears, And stunn'd him with the music of the spheres, How would he wish that Heaven had left him still The whispering zephyr and the purling rill!" --_Pope_, _Essay on Man_, I. "Her voice, the music of the spheres, So loud, it deafens mortals' ears, As wise philosophers have thought, And that's the cause we hear it not." --_Butler's Hudibras_, II, i, 617. See, also, Montaigne, _Essays_, I, xxii; Sir Thomas Browne's _Religio Medici_, II, 9; Plato's _Republic_, VI; Dryden's "Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew," etc. 35. =consort.= Accompaniment. This word, so written until Milton's time, has now given place to _concert_, whenever used as here. 36. =age of Gold.= The fabled primeval age of universal happiness. "A blisful lyfe, a peseable, and so swete, Ledde the peplis in the former age."--_Chaucer._ 37. =mould.= Matter, substance. The word is used in the old Romances to denote the earth itself. Milton elsewhere says: "Can any mortal mixture of earth's mould Breathe such divine, enchanting ravishment?" 38. =her.= Observe what has already been said (note 28, above) about the pronoun _its_. _Hell_, in the Anglo-Saxon language, is feminine. But, just above, observe the expression _it self_. See, in the last line of stanza xv, the pronoun _her_ with _heaven_ as its antecedent. _Heofon_, in the Anglo-Saxon, is also feminine. 39. This stanza is a fine example of word-painting. What idea is conveyed to your mind by the expressions, "orb'd in a rainbow," "like glories wearing," "thron'd in celestiall sheen," "the tissued clouds down stearing," etc.? What kind of glories will Mercy wear? Where will she sit? How will she be enthroned? What are _radiant_ feet? Why are Mercy's feet radiant? Does she steer the tissued clouds "with radiant feet," or does she steer herself down the tissued clouds? Why will the opening of Heaven's high palace wall be "as at some festivall"? 40. =bitter cross.= Compare Shakespeare, "1 Henry IV," Act i, sc. 1, 27: "Those blessed feet Which fourteen hundred years ago were nail'd For our advantage, on the bitter cross." 41. =ychain'd.= The _y_ is a corruption of the prefix _ge_, anciently used in connection with the past participle, and still retained in many German words. Often used by Chaucer and Spenser, as in yblessed, yburied, ybrent, yfonden, ygeten, yclad, yfraught, etc.