THE SOUL OF SONG. 
189 
the shelly beach and listens in love to the singing of the 
waves. He suspends the hollow shell upon the delicate 
fibre of the palm, and strikes it with his hand, that it 
may give forth song. He fashions the marsh reed or 
the stem of grass into a flute, and enchants his listening 
children with its voice. And when the toils of the chase 
are done, he gathers together his fellow-huntsmen, and 
in the purple of the evening air they sing together their 
songs of joy. 
It was the consciousness of union between the soul of 
man and the soul of song which begot those lovely con¬ 
ceits of antiquity which represented nature as a musical 
or rhythmic harmony. Plato said, the soul of man was 
itself a harmony, and had its nearest sympathies in music. 
Bolder still was the sage of Samos, when he said that the 
orbs of heaven were so harmonious in their motions that 
it must be accompanied by ravishing songs,—that the 
worlds warble in their ceaseless march, while the blue 
deeps beat back the chorus and repeat the echo of their 
psalms. 
All fables, when understood, become facts. Orpheus 
is no fable; he is the poet skilled in harmony whom the 
ages honour with the attributes of divinity in remem¬ 
brance of the solace which men found in his songs. The 
Orphic hymns are lost, but fragments of his legendary 
life remain to testify how closely men cling to the 
remembrance of pleasure. When Orpheus bewailed the 
death of his wife Euridyce, the sweet sound of his lyre 
caused a forest of elms to spring up, and the charm of 
his harp was so great that the woods nodded, the brown 
rocks broke their bonds and marched entranced towards 
