should be red and white, symbolical of love and purity, for in paradise the two are inseparable, and purity without love as impossible as love without purity."

The idea of St. Cecilia seems to have brooded over art in its most richly sensuous development, and to have infused it with a fine spiritual sentiment, without exacting any real sacrifice of the warm and the splendid. Her idea, though virginal, is without austerity; it is young, fresh, and feminine, with the blended charm of child and angel.

In much the same way as it came to music and to art has the St. Cecilia influence come to poetry-the third strand of the triple inspiration. Her beauty, innocence, and submission, her high yet gentle heroism, and her tragic fate, could not appear in the majestic, pregnant silence of sculptured marble, in the heart-felt and heart-awakening color of Raphael's touch, and be absent from the great mosaic of song.

ST. CECILIA.-A LEGEND.

FROM THE FRENCH OF MADAME ÉMILE DE GIRARDIN. It was a high-born Roman maid, Valerian's virgin wife,

Who, long ago, for Christian faith,

Gave her pure life.

And yearly in its sacred walls,
When comes the winter-time,
The people glorify this saint

With song and chime.

To her all arts yield tribute due;
Great Raphael makes her fair,
By her own songs interpreting,
In colors rare.

With halo crowned, clasping her lute,
And beauteously attired,
Cecilia is the patron saint
Of the Inspired.

Virgin, type of harmony,

She inspires the sacred song, And her voice responds to Genius From heaven's throng.

A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY, 1687.
JOHN DRYDEN.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began;
When Nature underneath a heap
Of jarring atoms lay,

And could not heave her head,
The tuneful voice was heard from high,
Arise, ye more than dead!

Then cold, and hot, and moist, and dry,
In order to their stations leap,
And Music's power obey.

From harmony, from heavenly harmony,
This universal frame began:
From harmony to harmony,

That angels, listening, leaned from heav'n

The diapason closing full in man.

What passion can not Music raise and quell?
When Jubal struck the chorded shell,
His listening brethren stood around,

And, wondering, on their faces fell

To worship that celestial sound. Less than a god they thought there could not dwell

Within the hollow of that shell,

That spoke so sweetly and so well.

What passion can not Music raise and quell?

The trumpet's loud clangor
Excites us to arms,
With shrill notes of anger,
And mortal alarms.

The double double double beat
Of the thundering drum
Cries, hark! the foes come:
Charge, charge, 'tis too late to retreat.

The soft complaining flute

In dying notes discovers
The woes of hopeless lovers,

Whose dirge is whisper'd by the warbling lute.

Sharp violins proclaim

Their jealous pangs, and desperation,
Fury, frantic indignation,

Depth of pains, and height of passion,

For the fair, disdainful dame.

But oh! what art can teach,
What human voice can reach,
The sacred organ's praise?

Notes inspiring holy love,

Notes that wing their heavenly ways
To mend the choirs above.

Orpheus could lead the savage race:
And trees uprooted left their place,

Sequacious of the lyre;

But bright Cecilia raised the wonder higher; When to her organ vocal breath was given, An angel heard, and straight appear'd, Mistaking earth for heaven.

GRAND CHORUS.

As from the power of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise

To all the bless'd above,

So when the last and dreadful hour This crumbling pageant shall devour, The trumpet shall be heard on high, The dead shall live, the living die, And Music shall untune the sky.

A SONG FOR ST. CECILIA'S DAY AT OXFORD.

JOSEPH ADDISON.

I.

Cecilia, whose exalted hymns

With joy and wonder fill the blest,
In choirs of warbling seraphims

Known and distinguish'd from the rest,
Attend, harmonious saint, and see
Thy vocal sons of harmony;

Attend, harmonious saint, and hear our pray'rs,
Enliven all our earthly airs,

And, as thou sing'st thy God, teach us to sing of thee:

Tune every string and every tongue;

Be thou the Muse and subject of our song.

II.

Let all Cecilia's praise proclaim,
Employ the echo in her name.

Hark! how the flutes and trumpets raise,
At bright Cecilia's name, their lays!
The organ labors in her praise.
Cecilia's name does all our numbers grace,
From ev'ry voice the tuneful accents fly,
In soaring trebles now it rises high,
And now it sinks, and dwells upon the base;
Cecilia's name through all the notes we sing,
The work of ev'ry skillful tongue,

The sound of ev'ry trembling string, The sound and trump of every song.

III.

Forever consecrate the day.
To music and Cecilia;

Music, the greatest good that mortals know,
And all of heav'n we have below:
Music can noble hints impart,
Engender fury, kindle love;

With unsuspected eloquence can move
And manage all the man with secret art.

When Orpheus strikes the trembling lyre, The streams stand still, the stones admire, The list'ning savages advance,

The wolf and lamb around him trip,
The bears in awkward measures leap,
And tigers mingle in the dance.
The moving woods attended as he played,
And Rhodope was left without a shade.
IV.

Music religious hearts inspires;

It wakes the soul, and lifts it high, And wings it with sublime desires, And fits it to bespeak the Deity. The Almighty listens to a tuneful tongue, And seems well pleased and courted with the song.

Soft moving sounds and heav'nly airs Give force to every word, and recommend our pray'rs.

When time itself shall be no more,

And all things in confusion hurl'd,
Music shall then exert its pow'r,

And sound survive the ruins of the world.
Then saints and angels shall agree
In one eternal jubilee;

All heav'n shall echo with their hymns divine,
And God himself with pleasure see
The whole creation in a chorus join.

CHORUS.

Consecrate the place and day

To music and Cecilia.

Let no rough winds approach, nor dare
Invade the hallow'd bounds,

Nor rudely shake the tuneful air,
Nor spoil the fleeting sounds.
Nor mournful sigh nor groan be heard,
But gladness dwell on ev'ry tongue;
Whilst all, with voice and strings prepared,
Keep up the loud harmonious song,
And imitate the blest above,

In joy and harmony and love.

ON ST. CECILIA'S DAY.

ALEXANDER POPE.

Descend, ye Nine! descend and sing,
The breathing instruments inspire;
Wake into voice each silent string,
And sweep the sounding lyre!
In a sadly pleasing strain
Let the warbling lute complain;
Let the loud trumpet sound
Till the roofs all around
The shrill echoes rebound;
While in more lengthen'd notes, and slow,
The deep, majestic, solemn organs blow.
Hark! the numbers soft and clear
Gently steal upon the ear;
Now louder and yet louder rise,

And fill with spreading sounds the skies. Exulting in triumph now swell the bold notes,

In broken air trembling the wild music floats;

Till by degrees, remote and small,

The strains decay,

And melt away

In a dying, dying fall.

By music minds an equal temper know,
Nor swell too high nor sink too low.
If in the breast tumultuous joys arise,
Music her soft assuasive voice applies;

Or when the soul is press'd with cares,
Exalts her in enlivening airs.

Warriors she fires with animated sounds,

By the heroes' armed shades

Glittering through the gloomy glades; By the youths that died for love, Wandering in the myrtle grove— Restore, restore Eurydice to life; Oh, take the husband, or restore the wife! He sung, and hell consented To hear the poet's prayer;

Stern Proserpine relented,

And gave him back the fair.
Thus song could prevail

O'er death and o'er hell,