The Cornhill Magazine, February, 1860 (Vol. I, No. 2)Various
General
The Cornhill Magazine, February, 1860 (Vol. I, No. 2)
Various
England -- Periodicals; English literature -- Periodicals; Short stories, English -- Periodicals
I wish I were a poet; you should have a description of all this in
verses, and welcome. But if I were a musician! Let us see what we
should do as musicians. First, you should hear the distant sound of
a bugle, which sound should float away: that is one of the heralds
of the morning, flying southward. Then another should issue from the
eastern gates; and now the grand _reveillé_ should grow, sweep past
your ears (like the wind aforesaid), and go on, dying as it goes.
When as it dies, my stringed instruments come in. These to the left
of the orchestra break into a soft slow movement, the music swaying
drowsily from side to side, as it were, with a noise like the rustling
of boughs. It must not be much of a noise, however, for my stringed
instruments to the right have begun the very song of the morning.
The bows tremble upon the strings, like the limbs of a dancer, who,
a-tiptoe, prepares to bound into her ecstacy of motion. Away! The song
soars into the air as if it had the wings of a kite. Here swooping,
there swooping, wheeling upward, falling suddenly, checked, poised
for a moment on quivering wings, and again away. It is waltz time,
and you hear the Hours dancing to it. Then the horns. Their melody
overflows into the air richly, like honey of Hybla; it wafts down in
lazy gusts, like the scent of the thyme from that hill. So my stringed
instruments to the left cease rustling, listen a little while, catch
the music of those others, and follow it. Now for the rising of the
lark! Henceforward it is a chorus, and he is the leader thereof. Heaven
and earth agree to follow him. I have a part for the brooks--their
notes drop, drop, drop, like his: for the woods--they sob like him.
At length, nothing remains but to blow the hautboys; and just as the
chorus arrives at its fulness, they come maundering in. They have a
sweet old blundering “cow-song” to themselves--a silly thing, made of
the echoes of all pastoral sounds. There’s a warbling waggoner in it,
and his team jingling their bells. There’s a shepherd driving his flock
from the fold, bleating; and the lowing of cattle.--Down falls the lark
like a stone: it is time he looked for grubs. Then the hautboys go
out, gradually; for the waggoner is far on his road to market; sheep
cease to bleat and cattle to low, one by one; they are on their grazing
ground, and the business of the day is begun. Last of all, the heavenly
music sweeps away to waken more westering lands, over the Atlantic and
its whitening sails.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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