ALEXANDER'S FEAST.

OR, THE POWER OF MUSIC.

Introductory Note.-This song was written in 1697, in a single night, according to St. John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke. He states that Dryden said to him when he called upon him one morning: "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."

I.

"Twas at the royal feast for Persia won

By Philip's warlike son,

Aloft in awful state

The godlike hero sate

On his imperial throne;

His valiant peers were plac'd around,

Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound; (So shou'd desert in arms be crown'd.)

The lovely Thais, by his side,

Sate like a blooming Eastern bride,

In flow'r of youth and beauty's pride.

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1. 'Twas at, etc. There is here a sort of rhetorical ellipsis. He means, "It was at the royal feast that what follows happened," or, "The scene of the subject of our Ode was the hall of the royal feast; but he boldly omits the explanatory clause. In the well-known words, We met, 'twas in a crowd," the explanatory clause, in fact, precedes; but it is often omitted altogether, as here, especially in the beginning of a tale or poem. Comp. Moore's 'Tis the last rose of summer. [When was Persia "won"? See Hist. Greece.]

7. At a Greek banquet the guests wer egarlanded with roses and myr. tle leaves.

9. Thais See Smith's larger Biog, and Mythol. Dict. Athenæus is our chief informant about her. According to him, she was, after Alexander's death, married to Ptolemy Lagi. She was as famous for her wit as her beauty. "Her name is best known from the story of her having stimulated the Conqueror (Alexander), during a great festival at Persep olis, 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.

ii. [In what two ways may youth in this line be parsed? Which is the better?

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And while he sought her snowy breast;
Then round her slender waste he curled

And stamp'd an image of himself, a sov'raign of the world.
The list'ning crowd admire the lofty sound.

A present deity, they shout around;

A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound.

12. Pair and peer (6) are etymologically identical.

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16. Timotheus: See Smith's larger Biog. and Mythol. Dict. This Timotheus is said to have been a Theban, Suidas tells us he" flourished under Alexander the Great, on whom his music made so powerful an impression that once in the midst of a performance by Timotheus of an Orthian poem to Athena, he started from his seat and seized his arms." The more celebrated Timotheus, "the musician and poet of the later Athenian dithyramb," a native of Miletus, died some thirty years before Alexander's conquest of Persia.

17. Tuneful: See St. Cecilia's Day. 6.

21. Began from Jove: See St. Cecilia's Day, 2.

22. Seats: So in Latin, sedes is used in the plural.

24. [What is meant by Bely'd the God? Comp. Shakspere's Richard III. II. ii. 76-7.]

For this wild story see Plutarch's Alex. etc. See Paradise Lost, ix. 494510. In the medieval romances about Alexander it was not Jove. but one Nectanebus, a refugee king of Egypt, who was the father of the prince: see e. g. the fragment of Alisaunder edited by Mr. Skeat for the Early English Text Society.

25. Radiant Spires: Comp. Milton's "circling spires."

Which is the better word with which to connect on radiant spires } What does rode mean?]

26. Her name was Olympias. See Class. Dict.

81. A present deity. Comp. Hor. Od. III. v. 2; Psalm xivı. 1.

With ravish'd ears
The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres.

III.

The praise of Bacchus, then the sweet musician sung,
Of Bacchus ever fair, and ever young.

The jolly god in triumph comes;

Sound the trumpets, beat the drums ;
Flush'd with a purple grace

He shews his honest face;

Now give the hautboys breath; he comes, he comes.

Bacchus, ever fair and young,

Drinking joys did first ordain;

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40

45

Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,
Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;

Rich the treasure,

Sweet the pleasure,

Sweet is pleasure after pain.

IV.

Sooth'd with the sound the king grew vain;

Fought all his battails o'er again;

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And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the

slain.

The master saw the madness rise,

His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes;

87. See Hom. Iliad, 1. 528-30.

Virg. En. x. 115:

"Annuit, et totum nutu tremefecit Olympum."

The Latin numen means originally a nod.

38. Bacchus. See Class. Dict.

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43. Honest face handsome face. The epithet is taken from Virgil.

Honest-like is used in Scotland for "goodly as regarding the person." 44. Hautboys - oboes (French, hautbois, that is haut-bois).

53. [What battles had he fought?]

[What is meant by to fight over a battle?]

56. Ardent eyes: See Cicero's speech in Verr. II. iv. 66, of one Theomastus' madness: "Nam quum spumus ageret in ore, oculis arderet voce maxima vim me sibi adferre clameret, copulati in jus pervenimus.'

And while he heaven and earth defy'd,
Chang'd his hand, and check'd his pride.
He chose a mournful Muse,

With downcast looks the joyless victor sate,
Revolveing in his alter'd soul

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The various turns of chance below :

And, now and then, a sigh he stole,
And tears began to flow.

V.

The mighty master smil❜d to see
That love was in the next degree;
"Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.

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36. 61. [Was there ever any difference between sung and sang? See Latham's English Grammar.]

65. Weltering: See Hymn Nat. 124, (The Golden Treasury)

68. Expos'd=cast out. Comp. Latin exponere.

69. Comp. Pope's Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady:

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

With not a friend: A here has its older force; it = one, a single ; see note to "at a birth," All. Not a, is, in fact, a stronger form of none or no. The negative in this phrase is sometimes never.

73. A sigh he stole he sighed privily, or it may be silently. See Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, III. ii. 142.

"Twere good, methinks, to steal our marriage."

which is explained by "the lover sighing like a furnace" in As You Like It, II. vii. 148.

77. 'Twas, etc. See above, l. 1.

Softly sweet, in Lydian measures,

Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures.

80

War, he sung, is toil and trouble,

Honor but an empty bubble,
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying;
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O think it worth enjoying ;
Lovely Thais sits beside thee.

Take the good the gods provide thee,

The many rend the skies with loud applause;

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So Love was crown'd, but Musique won the cause. 90
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,

Gaz'd on the fair

Who caus'd his care,

And sigh'd and look'd, sigh'd and look'd,
Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again;

At length, with love and wine, at once oppress'd
The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

VI.

Now strike the golden lyre again;

A lowder yet, and yet a lowder strain.

Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouze him, like a rattling peal of thunder.

79. [What does sweet here qualify?]

Lydian measures: See Milton's L'Allegro, 136.

95

100

Conversely, love melts the soul to pity in Two Gentlemen of Verona, IV. iv. 101.

·་

82. See Falstaff's catechism, I. Henry IV. V. I.

83. [What is it that is never ending, etc.? What fighting still, etc. ?] 85. Worth Winning: So "worth nothing, worth ambition.

wo a thy sight," "worth inquiry," "worth while." (With "worthy the preposition is generally inserted, but in Shakespeare, Coriol. III. i. 299, we have "worthy death."). This construction may be explained in this way the Ang.-Sax. inflection which marked the word governed by weorth fell out of use, and its omission was not compensated for by the introduction of the preposition.

96. [What is the force of at once here? What does it qualify?] 98. [Why does he say again?]

100. Bands of sleep: Comp. "bands of death," "the bands of those sins" (Collect for the 24th Sunday after Trinity), etc. The notes that rouse him are to be very different from those which are to make Orpheus "heave his head," in Milton's L'Allegro.