Six Centuries of English Poetry Part 26

As awaked from the dead, And amaz'd he stares around.

Revenge! revenge! Timotheus cries, See the Furies{20} arise: See the snakes that they rear, How they hiss in their hair, And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!

Behold a ghastly band, Each a torch in his hand!

Those are Grecian ghosts,{21} that in battle were slain, And unburied remain Inglorious on the plain: Give the vengeance due To the valiant crew.{22} Behold how they toss their torches on high, How they point to the Persian abodes, And glittering temples of their hostile G.o.ds!

The princes applaud with a furious joy; And the king seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy; Thais led the way,{23} To light him to his prey, And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

_Chorus._

And the king seiz'd a flambeau with zeal to destroy; Thais led the way, To light him to his prey, And like another Helen, fired another Troy.

Thus, long ago, Ere heaving bellows learn'd to blow, While organs{24} yet were mute; Timotheus to his breathing flute, And sounding lyre, Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.

At last divine Cecilia came, Inventress of the vocal frame;{25} The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, Enlarged the former narrow bounds, And added length to solemn sounds, With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.

Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown: He rais'd a mortal to the skies; She drew an angel down.{26}

_Grand Chorus._

At last divine Cecilia came, Inventress of the vocal frame; The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, Enlarged the former narrow bounds, And added length to solemn sounds, With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown before.

Let old Timotheus yield the prize, Or both divide the crown: He rais'd a mortal to the skies She drew an angel down.

NOTES.

This song was written in 1697. Lord Bolingbroke relates that, calling upon the poet one morning, Dryden said to him: "I have been up all night; my musical friends made me promise to write them an ode for their Feast of St. Cecilia, and I was so struck with the subject which occurred to me that I could not leave it till I had completed it: here it is, finished at one sitting."

The poem was first set to music by one Jeremiah Clarke, a steward of the Musical Society, whose members had solicited Dryden to write it. In 1736 it was rearranged by the great composer Handel, and again presented at a public performance.

M. Taine says, "His 'Alexander's Feast' is an admirable trumpet-blast, in which metre and sound impress upon the nerves the emotions of the mind, a master-piece of rapture and of art, which Victor Hugo alone has come up to."

"As a piece of poetical mechanism to be set to music, or recited in alternate strophe and anti-strophe," says Hazlitt, "nothing can be better."

"This ode is Dryden's greatest and best work."--_Macaulay._

1. =royal feast.= About the year B.C. 331, Alexander the Great, having overthrown the Persian Empire, held a great feast at Persepolis in celebration of his victories. At the close of the revelries, instigated, it is said, by Thais, his Athenian mistress, he set fire with his own hand to the great palace of Persepolis; and a general ma.s.sacre of the inhabitants ensued. The ruins of the city and palace are still to be seen in a beautiful valley watered by the river Araxes--now called Bendemir--not far from the border of the Carmanian Desert.

2. =with roses and with myrtles.= At the banquets of the Greeks it was the custom of the guests to wear garlands of roses and myrtles.

3. =Thais.= "Her name is best known from the story of her having stimulated the Conqueror, during a great festival at Persepolis, to set fire to the palace of the Persian kings; but this anecdote, immortalized as it has been by Dryden's famous ode, appears to rest on the sole authority of Cleitarchus, one of the least trustworthy of the historians of Alexander, and is in all probability a mere fable." After the death of Alexander, Thais became the wife of Ptolemy Lagus.

4. =Timotheus.= A famous flute-player from Thebes. Another and more celebrated Timotheus, "the poet of the later Athenian dithyramb," was a native of Miletus and died about the time of Alexander's birth.

5. Alexander claimed to be the son of Jupiter Ammon; and when he visited the temple of that G.o.d, in the Libyan Desert, he was received by the priests and honored as such. See Plutarch's _Life of Alexander_.

6. =present deity.= See Psalm xlvi. 1.

7. =affects to nod.= See Homer's "Iliad." I, 528-530: "Jove spake, and nodded his dark brow, and the ambrosial locks waved from his immortal head; and he made great Olympus quake."

8. =hautboys.= Oboes. French _hautbois_. Wind instruments resembling the clarionet.

=Bacchus.= Compare Shakespeare:

"Come, thou monarch of the vine, Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne."

--_Antony and Cleopatra_, Act ii, sc. 7.

9. =thrice he slew the slain.= How could he slay the slain?

10. =Darius.= At the time of this feast at Persepolis, Darius, the vanquished king of Persia, was still living, although a fugitive. In the following year Alexander pursued him into the Parthian Desert, where he was murdered by the satrap of Bactria. By order of Alexander, the body of the unfortunate king was sent to Persepolis, to be buried in the tombs of the kings.

11. =expos'd he lies.= Dryden seems to have written this under the impression that Darius had been killed before the time of the great feast at Persepolis.

12. =close his eyes.= Compare this with the lines from Pope ("Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady"):

"By foreign hands thy dying eyes were closed; By foreign hands thy decent limbs composed."

13. =a sigh he stole.= Sighed silently. His sighs when the result of pity were not very distinctly uttered. Compare Shakespeare:

"And then the lover, Sighing like a furnace."

--_As You Like It_, Act ii, sc. 7.

And then read, in the next stanza, how Alexander sighed when moved by love.

14. =pity melts the mind to love.= Compare:

"Pity swells the tide of love."

--_Young's Night Thoughts_, III, 106.

"Pity's akin to love."

--_Southern's Oroonoko_, II, 1.

15. =Lydian measures.= The people of Lydia were noted for the effeminacy of their manners. And Lydian music was peculiarly soft and voluptuous.

"And ever against eating cares, Lap me in soft Lydian airs."

--_Milton's L'Allegro_, 135.

"And all the while sweet Musicke did divide Her looser notes with Lydian harmony."

--_Spenser's Faerie Queene_, III, 1.

Observe the change in metre in the ten lines beginning "Softly sweet."

What does the word _sweet_ modify?

16. =Honor, but an empty bubble.= So Shakespeare:

"Honor is a mere scutcheon."

--_1 Henry IV._, Act v, sc. 1.

17. =The many.= The mult.i.tude.

18. =sigh'd and look'd.= He no longer _steals_ a sigh, as he did when pitying Darius. See note 13, above.

19. =Break his bands of sleep.= The music now is very different from the Lydian measures which "soothed his soul to pleasures." "Suidas," says Dr. Warton, "mentions the Orthian style in music, in which Timotheus is said to have played to Alexander; and one Antigenidas inflamed this prince still more by striking into what were called Harmatian measures.

Quintus Curtius gives a minute description of the burning of the palace at Persepolis, when Alexander was accompanied by Thais. But it does not appear in the accurate Arrian that Thais had any share in this transaction. Arrian, but more so Aristobulus, endeavored to exculpate Alexander from the charge of frequent ebriety; but Menander plainly mentions the drunkenness of Alexander as proverbial."