Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie
To lull the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,
And the low world in measured motion draw
After the heavenly tune._
From the greater poets let us turn to a lesser one, whom we shall have
occasion to quote again by and by: to the _Orchestra_ of Sir John Davies
(1596), who sees this whole Universe treading the harmonious measures of
a dance; and let us select one stanza, of the tides:
_For lo, the sea that fleets about the land,
And like a girdle clips her solid waist,
Music and Measure both doth understand;
For his great Crystal Eye is always cast
Up to the Moon, and on her fixed fast;
And as she daunceth in her pallid sphere,
So daunceth he about the centre here._
This may be fantastic. As the late Professor Skeat informed the world
solemnly in a footnote, "Modern astronomy has exploded the singular
notion of revolving hollow concentric spheres...." (The Professor wrote
"singular" when he meant "curious."--The notion was never "singular.")
"These 'spheres,'" he adds, "have disappeared, and their music with
them, except in poetry." Nevertheless the fable presents a truth, and
one of the two most important truths in the world.
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