"SUFFERING!" said the Harp-strings. "We were dull lumps of silver and
copper-ore in the mines; and no silence on the living, sunny earth is
like the blank of voiceless ages in those dead and sunless depths. But,
since then, we have passed through many fires. The hidden earth-fires
underneath the mountains first moulded us, millenniums since, to ore;
and then, in these last years, human hands have finished the training
which makes us what we are.
"We have been smelted in furnaces heated seven times, till all our
dross was gone; and then we have been drawn out on the rack, and
hammered and fused, and, at last, stretched on these wooden frames, and
drawn tighter and tighter, until we wonder at ourselves, and at the
gentle hand which strikes such rich and wondrous chords and melodies
from us—from us, who were once silent lumps of ore in the silent mines.
Fires and blows have done it for us. SUFFERING has made us musical,"
said the Harp-strings.