Some English Poems in Praise of Music

Abstract

The finest poems and poetical passages on the subject of music in any language are to be found in the writings of the English poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One has only to turn over the current editions of the English, and not only the English, poets to see how insensitive the commentators generally are to an area of thought and feeling that once was universally understood. As an organized topic the Praise of Music belongs primarrily to the school-tradition of the liberal arts. Plutarch introduces the item 'music of the spheres' at the end of his discussion, Quintilian near the beginning of his, but neither relates it to the topic 'nature of the soul', as Shakespeare does. Though physically incapable of hearing the sphere-music, we respond to music in general because of our memory of the celestial music, and the lower animals also respond, since they share in the world-soul.

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