O for some soul-affecting scheme Of _moral_ music, to unite Wanderers whose portion is the faintest dream 1835. [586] 1836 ... they ... 1835. [587] 1835. There is a world of spirit, By tones and numbers guided and controlled; And glorious privilege have they who merit Initiation in that mystery old. MS. copy by Dorothy Wordsworth. [588] The fundamental idea, both in the intellectual and moral philosophy of the Pythagoreans, was that of harmony or proportion. Their natural science or cosmology was dominated by the same idea, that as the world and all spheres within the universe were constructed symmetrically, and moved around a central focus, the forms and the proportions of things were best expressed by number. All good was due to the principle of order; all evil to disorder. In accordance with the mathematical conception of the universe which ruled the Pythagoreans, justice was equality (#isotês#), that is to say it consisted in each one receiving equally according to his deserts. Friendship too was equality of feeling and relationship; harmony being the radical idea, alike in the ethics and in the cosmology of the school.--ED. [589] Compare Keats, in a letter to his friend Bailey, in 1817: "The great elements we know of are no mean comforters; the open sky sits upon our senses like a sapphire crown; the air is our robe of state; the earth is our throne; and the sea a mighty minstrel playing before it."--ED. [590] Compare _The Excursion_, book iv. l. 1163 (vol. v. p. 188)-- ... choral song, or burst Sublime of instrumental harmony, To glorify the Eternal!--ED. [591] See the Fenwick note prefixed to this poem.--ED. [592] Genesis i.--ED. [593] "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light" (Genesis i. 3). ED. [594] 1 Corinthians xv. 52.--ED. [595] Compare _Ode, Intimations of Immortality_, in stanza ix.-- Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence.--ED. [596] St. Luke xxi. 33.--ED. 1829 The Poems of 1829 were few; and were, for the most part, suggested by incidents or occurrences at Rydal Mount.--ED. GOLD AND SILVER FISHES IN A VASE Composed 1829.--Published 1835