2O The Poets and Natiire. 



He cries, " A treasure ! " and, laughing, addresses the 

 animal : 



" A useful godsend are you to me now 

 King of the dance, companion of the feast, 

 Lovely in all your nature ! Welcome, you 

 Excellent plaything ! Where, sweet mountain beast, 

 Got you that speckled shell? Thus much I know, 

 You must come home with me, and be my guest ; 



You will give joy to me, and I will do 



All that is in my power to honour you. 



Better to be at home than out of door ; 



So come with me, and though it has been said 



That you alive defend from magic power, 



I know you will sing sweetly when you're dead. 



Thus having spoken, the quaint infant bore 



Lifting it from the grass on which it fed, 



And grasping it in his delighted hold 



His treasured prize into the cavern old." 



Arrived there, he " featly " scoops the shell out, drills holes 

 in it, fastens reeds into them, spreads leather across, fixes 

 the cubits in, " Fitting the bridge to both, and stretched o'er 

 all, Symphonious cords of sheep-gut rhythmical." When he 

 had finished " the lovely instrument," he tried it, and 



* ' There went 



Up from beneath his hand a tumult sweet 

 Of mighty sounds." 



Montgomery gives the earliest Christian origin of the 

 lyre : 



' ' A shell of tortoise, exquisitely wrought 

 With hieroglyphics of embodied thought ; 

 Jubal himself enchased the polished frame, 

 And Javan won it in the strife for fame ; 

 Among the sons of music, when their sire 

 To his victorious skill adjudged the lyre." 



The line, " That you alive defend from magic power," is 

 worth a note. The blood of the tortoise was considered by 

 the ancients an antidote to subtle venom. Protected itself 

 by its shield, it became a protector. The Romans bathed 



