Volume Ix Part 80 (2/2)

COM. SEN. Auditus!

AUD. Thanks, good Apollo, for this timely grace, Never couldst thou in fitter hour indulge it: O more than most musical harmony!

O most admirable concert! have you no ears?

Do you not hear this music?

PHA. It may be good; but, in my opinion, they rest too long in the beginning.

AUD. Are you then deaf? do you not yet perceive The wondrous sound the heavenly orbs do make With their continual motion? hark, hark, O honey-sweet!

COM. SEN. What tune do they play?

AUD. Why such a tune as never was, nor ever shall be heard.

Mark now, now mark: now, now!

PHA. List, list, list.

AUD. Hark! O sweet, sweet, sweet.

PHA. List! how my heart envies my happy ears.

Hist, by the gold-strung harp of Apollo, I hear the celestial music of the spheres, As plainly as ever Pythagoras did.

O most excellent diapason! good, good.

It plays _Fortune my foe_,[269] as distinctly as may be.

COM. SEN. As the fool thinketh, so the bell clinketh. I protest I hear no more than a post.

PHA. What, the Lavolta![270] eh? nay, if the heavens fiddle, Fancy must needs dance.

COM. SEN. Prythee, sit still, thou must dance nothing but the pa.s.sing measures[271]. Memory, do you hear this harmony of the spheres?

MEM. Not now, my lord; but I remember about some four thousand years ago, when the sky was first made, we heard very perfectly.

ANA. By the same token, the first tune the planets played, I remember Venus the treble ran sweet division upon Saturn the ba.s.s. The first tune they played was Sellenger's round[272], in memory whereof ever since it hath been called ”the beginning of the world.”

COM. SEN. How comes it we cannot hear it now?

MEM. Our ears are so well acquainted with the sound, that we never mark it. As I remember, the Egyptian Catadupes[273] never heard the roaring of the fall of Nilus, because the noise was so familiar unto them.

COM. SEN. Have you no other objects to judge by than these, Auditus?

AUD. This is the rarest and most exquisite: Most spherical, divine, angelical; But since your duller ears cannot perceive it, May it please your lords.h.i.+p to withdraw yourself Unto this neighbouring grove: there shall you see How the sweet treble of the chirping birds, And the soft stirring of the moved leaves, Running delightful descant to the sound Of the base murmuring of the bubbling brook[274], Becomes a concert of good instruments; While twenty babbling echoes round about, Out of the stony concave of their mouths, Restore the vanished music of each close, And fill your ears full with redoubled pleasure.

COM. SEN. I will walk with you very willingly, for I grow weary of sitting. Come, Master Register and Master Phantastes.

[_Exeunt_ OMNES.

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