Her voice, the music of the spheres,
So loud, it deafens mortal ears;
As wise philosophers have thought,
And that's the cause we hear it not. 620
This has been done by some, who those
Th' ador'd in rhyme, would kick in prose;
And in those ribbons would have hung,
Of which melodiously they sung.[1]
That have the hard fate, to write best 625
Of those still that deserve it least;[2]
It matters not how false, or forc'd,
So the best things be said o' th' worst;
It goes for nothing when 'tis said,
Only the arrow's drawn to th' head, 630
Whether it be a swan or goose
They level at: so shepherds use
To set the same mark on the hip,
Both of their sound and rotten sheep:
For wits that carry low or wide, 635
Must be aim'd higher, or beside
The mark, which else they ne'er come nigh,
But when they take their aim awry.
But I do wonder you should chuse
This way t' attack me with your muse. 640
- ↑ Thus Waller on a girdle:
"Give me but what this riband bound." - ↑ Warburton was of opinion that Butler alluded to one of Mr Waller's poems on Saccharissa, where he complains of her unkindness. Others suppose, with more probability, that he alludes to the poet's well-known reply to the king, when he reproached him with having written best in praise of Oliver Cromwell. "We poets," says he, succeed better in fiction than in truth."
- ↑ Pythagoras asserted that this world is made according to musical proportion; and that the seven planets, betwixt heaven and earth, which govern the nativities of mortals, have an harmonious motion, and render various sounds, according to their several heights, so consonant, that they make most sweet melody, but to us inaudible, because of the greatness of the noise, which the narrow passage of our ears is not capable to receive. He is presumed to have interpreted the passage in Job literally: "When the morning stars sang together," chap. xxix. 7. Stanley's Life of Pythagoras, p.393. Milton wrote on the Harmony of the Spheres, when at Cambridge; and has some fine lines on the subject, in his Arcades, and in his Paradise Lost, v. 625, &c. See Shakspeare's Merchant of Venice Act v. sc. 1, for the most exquisite passage in the language on this subject.
