[Illustration]
The spirit of music, like an archangel, presides over mankind and the
visible creation. Her afflatus, divinely sweet, divinely powerful, is
breathed on every human heart, and inspires every soul to some nobler
sentiment, some higher thought, some greater action.
O music, sweetest, sublimest ideal of Omniscience, first-born of God,
fairest and loftiest Seraph of the celestial hierarchy, Muse of the
beautiful, daughter of the Universe!
In the morning of eternity, when the stars were young, her first grand
oratorio burst upon raptured Deity, and thrilled the wondering angels;
all heaven shouted; ten thousand times ten thousand jeweled harps, ten
thousand times ten thousand angel tongues caught up the song; and ever
since, through all the golden cycles, its breathing melodies, old as
eternity, yet ever new as the flitting hours, have floated on the air
of heaven. The Seraph stood, with outstretched wings, on the horizon
of heaven--clothed in light, ablaze with gems; and with voice attuned,
swept her burning harp strings, and lo! the blue infinite thrilled with
her sweetest note. The trembling stars heard it, and flashed their joy
from every flaming center. The wheeling orbs that course their paths
of light were vibrant with the strain, and pealed it back into the
glad ear of God. The far off milky way, bright gulf-stream of astral
glories, spanning the ethereal deep, resounded with its harmonies, and
the star-dust isles floating in that river of opal, re-echoed the happy
chorus from every sparkling strand.
[Illustration]
"THE PARADISE OF FOOLS."
Have you ever thought of the wealth that perished when paradise
was lost? Have you ever thought of the glory of Eden, the first
estate of man? I think it was the very dream of God, glowing with
ineffable beauty. I think it was rimmed with blue mountains, from whose
moss-covered cliffs leaped a thousand glassy streams that spread out in
mid-air, like bridal veils, kissing a thousand rainbows from the sun.
I think it was an archipelago of gorgeous colors, flecked with green
isles, where the grapevine staggered from tree to tree, as if drunk
with the wine of its own purple clusters, where peach, and plum, and
blood-red cherries, and every kind of berry, bent bough and bush,
and shone like showered drops of ruby and of pearl. I think it was
a wilderness of flowers, redolent of eternal spring and pulsing with
bird-song, where dappled fawns played on banks of violets, where
leopards, peaceful and tame, lounged in copses of magnolias, where
harmless tigers lay on snowy beds of lilies, and lions, lazy and
gentle, panted in jungles of roses. I think its billowy landscapes
were festooned with tangling creepers, bright with perennial bloom,
and curtained with sweet-scented groves, where the orange and the
pomegranate hung like golden globes and ruddy moons. I think its air was
softened with the dreamy haze of perpetual summer; and through its midst
there flowed a translucent river, alternately gleaming in its sunshine
and darkening in its shadows. And there, in some sweet, dusky bower,
fresh from the hand of his Creator, slept Adam, the first of the human
race; God-like in form and feature; God-like in all the attributes of
mind and soul. No monarch ever slept on softer, sweeter couch, with
richer curtains drawn about him. And as he slept, a face and form, half
hidden, half revealed, red-lipped, rose-cheeked, white bosomed and with
tresses of gold, smiled like an angel from the mirror of his dream; for
a moment smiled, and so sweetly, that his heart almost forgot to beat.
And while yet this bright vision still haunted his slumber, with
tenderest touch an unseen hand lay open the unconscious flesh in his
side, and forth from the painless wound a faultless being sprang; a
being pure and blithesome as the air; a sinless woman, God's first
thought for the happiness of man. I think he wooed her at the waking of
the morning. I think he wooed her at noon-tide, down by the riverside,
or by the spring in the dell. I think he wooed her at twilight, when
the moon silvered the palm tree's feathery plumes, and the stars looked
down, and the nightingale sang. And wherever he wooed her, I think the
grazing herds left sloping hill and peaceful vale, to listen to the
wooing, and thence themselves, departed in pairs. The covies heard it
and mated in the fields; the quail wooed his love in the wheat; the
robin whistled to his love in the glen;
"The lark was so brim-full of gladness and love,
The green fields below him--the blue sky above,
That he sang, and he sang, and forever sang he:
I love my Love, and my Love loves me."
Love songs bubbled from the mellow throats of mocking-birds and
bobolinks; dove cooed love to dove; and I think the maiden monkey, fair
"Juliet" of the House of Orang-outang, waited on her cocoanut balcony
for the coming of her "Romeo," and thus plaintively sang:
[Illustration: JULIET.]
(Sung to the air of My Sweetheart's the Man in the Moon.)
"My sweetheart's the lovely baboon,
I'm going to marry him soon;
'Twould fill me with joy
Just to kiss the dear boy,
For his charms and his beauty
No power can destroy."
"I'll sit in the light of the moon,
And sing to my darling baboon,
When I'm safe by his side
And he calls me his bride;
Oh! my Angel, my precious baboon!"
[Illustration: ROMEO.]
All paradise was imbued with the spirit of love. Oh, that it could have
remained so forever! There was not a painted cheek in Eden, nor a bald
head, nor a false tooth, nor a bachelor. There was not a flounce, nor
a frill, nor a silken gown, nor a flashy waist with aurora borealis
sleeves. There was not a curl paper, nor even a threat of crinoline.
Raiment was an after thought, the mask of a tainted soul, born of
original sin. Beauty was unmarred by gaudy rags; Eve was dressed in
sunshine, Adam was clad in climate.
Every rich blessing within the gift of the Almighty Father was poured
out from the cornucopia of heaven, into the lap of paradise. But it
was a paradise of fools, because they stained it with disobedience
and polluted it with sin. It was the paradise of fools because, in the
exercise of their own God-given free agency, they tasted the forbidden
fruit and fell from their glorious estate. Oh, what a fall was there! It
was the fall of innocence and purity; it was the fall of happiness into
the abyss of woe; it was the fall of life into the arms of death. It was
like the fall of the wounded albatross, from the regions of light, into
the sea; it was like the fall of a star from heaven to hell. When the
jasper gate forever closed behind the guilty pair, and the flaming
sword of the Lord mounted guard over the barred portal, the whole
life-current of the human race was shifted into another channel; shifted
from the roses to the thorns; shifted from joy to sorrow, and it bore
upon its dark and turbulent bosom, the wrecked hopes of all the ages.
I believe they lost intellectual powers which fallen man has never
regained. Operating by the consent of natural laws, sinless man would
have wrought endless miracles. The mind, winged like a seraph, and armed
like a thunderbolt, would have breached the very citadel of knowledge
and robbed it of its treasures. I think they lost a plane of being only
a little lower than the angels. I believe they lost youth, beauty, and
physical immortality. I believe they lost the virtues of heart and soul,
and many of the magnificent powers of mind, which made them the images
of God, and which would have even brushed aside the now impenetrable
veil which hides from mortal eyes the face of Infinite Love; that Love
which gave the ever-blessed light, and filled the earth with music of
bird, and breeze, and sea; that Love whose melodies we sometimes faintly
catch, like spirit voices, from the souls of orators and poets; that
Love which inlaid the arching firmament of heaven with jewels sparkling
with eternal fires. But thank God, their fall was not like the
remediless fall of Lucifer and his angels, into eternal darkness. Thank
God, in this "night of death" hope _does_ see a star! It is the star of
Bethlehem. Thank God, "listening Love" _does_ "hear the rustle of a
wing!" It is the wing of the resurrection angel.
The memories and images of paradise lost have been impressed on every
human heart, and every individual of the race has his own ideal of that
paradise, from the cradle to the grave. But that ideal in so far as its
realization in this world is concerned, is like the rainbow, an elusive
phantom, ever in sight, never in reach, resting ever on the horizon of
hope.