Minds of a peculiar temperament have often found it a relief, in seasons of sadness, to give expression to their pent-up feelings in poetry or song. Ancient as well as modern verse and music abound with striking examples of this,--"Songs in the Night," when the mouldering harp was taken down from the willows by some captive spirit, and made to pour forth its strains or numbers in touching elegy. David's own lament for Jonathan is a gush of intensified feeling which will occur to all, and which could have been penned only in an agony of tears.[4] [4] As an example in modern poetry, need we refer to that noblest tribute ever penned over departed worth, the "_In Memoriam_" of Tennyson; or in modern song, to the exquisite and plaintive loveliness of this very Psalm, set to music by Mendelssohn, and so well known by the title, "_As the hart panteth_." It was a spirit crushed and broken with other, but not less poignant sorrows, which dictated this Psalm of his exile. May we not imagine that, in addition to the tension of feeling produced by his altered fortunes, there was in the very scene of his banishment, where the plaintive descant was composed, much to inspire poetic sentiment? The alternate calm and discord of outer nature found their response in his own chequered experiences. Nature's Æolian harp--its invisible strings composed of rustling leaves and foaming brooks, or the harsher tones of tempest and thunder, flood and waterfall--awoke the latent harmonies of his soul. They furnished him with a key-note to discourse higher melodies, and embody struggling thoughts in inspired numbers. In reading this Psalm we at once feel that we are with the Minstrel King, not in the Tabernacle of Zion, but in some glorious "House not made with hands,"--some Cathedral whose aisles are rocky cliffs and tangled branches, and its roof the canopy of Heaven! Let us picture him seated in one of those deep glens listening to the murmur of the rivulet and the wail of the forest. Suddenly the sky is overcast Dark clouds roll their masses along the purple peaks. The lightning flashes; and the old oaks and terebinths of Bashan bend under the tumult of the storm. The higher rivulets have swelled the channel of Jordan,--"deep calls to deep"--the waves chafe and riot along the narrow gorges. Suddenly a struggling ray of sunshine steals amid the strife, and a stray note from some bird answers joyously to its gleam. It is, however, _but_ a gleam. The sky again threatens, fresh bolts wake the mountain echoes. The river rolls on in augmented volume, and the wind wrestles fiercely as ever with the denizens of the forest. At last the contest is at an end. The sky is calm--the air refreshed--the woods are vocal with song--ten thousand dripping boughs sparkle in the sunlight; the meadows wear a lovelier emerald; and rock, and branch, and floweret, are reflected in the bosom of the stream.