INDEPENDENT WHEN GREATEST 273 
swiftness, and listen to their shrill beautiful voices, 
and were so carried away at the sight and sound 
that they laughed and wept and shouted their 
applause. But as they grew to womanhood they 
changed, and progressing from beauty to beauty, 
they yet grew less and less alike until, their sister- 
hood forgotten, they were become strangers to one 
another and drew further and further apart; and 
finally, each on her own throne, crowned a queen 
and goddess, and worshipped by innumerable devoted 
subjects, they dwell in widely-separated kingdoms. 
Now to drop allegory and metaphor and come 
back to downright "literal language," which even 
the blind spot in the mind can prevent no one 
from understanding. 
Milton was mistaken when he spoke or sung of 
" music married to immortal verse," seeing that 
immortal verse means great poetry and great poetry 
is great of itself; its greatness is lessened if not 
degraded by union with another art, however lustrous 
that art may be. In the same way music at its greatest 
is independent of poetry. When great music is built 
on a story, as in opera and oratorio, the words, 
although rhetorical, are not poetry. If they were, 
the poetry would go unheeded. It has no effect as 
poetry. If there were anything one could call poetry 
in such an opera, let us say, as Tristan and Isolde 
and I gave my attention to it, the Opera, as music, 
would be spoilt for me, seeing that the music means 
so much more than the story. 
Poetry and music, we may then say, are furthest 
