When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Thronged around her magic cell,
Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting,
Possessed beyond the Muse's painting;
By turns they felt the glowing mind
Disturbed, delighted, raised, refined:
Till once, 'tis said, when all were fired,
Filled with fury, rapt, inspired,
From the supporting myrtles round
They snatched her instruments of sound;
And as they oft had heard apart
Sweet lessons of her forceful art,
Each, for madness ruled the hour,
Would prove his own expressive power.
First Fear his hand, its skill to try,
Amid the chords bewildered laid, And back recoiled, he knew not why, Ev'n at the sound himself had made. 20
Were ne'er prophetic sounds so full of Last came Joy's ecstatic trial.
He, with viny crown advancing,
The plowman homeward plods his weary Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful
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