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 

 s 



