him, and commanded a trumpeter to sound, giving him a blow with his clenched fist for not instantly obeying him; though afterwards the same man was commended for disobeying an order which would have put the whole army into tumult and confusion.

Clitus still refusing to yield, was with much trouble forced by his friends out of the room. But he came in again immediately at another door, very irreverently and confidently singing the verses out of Euripides' " Andromache" :

In Greece, alas! how ill things ordered are!

Upon this, at last, Alexander, snatching a spear from one of the soldiers, met Clitus as he was coming forward and was putting by the curtain that hung before the door, and ran him through the body. He fell at once with a cry and a groan. Upon which the king's anger immediately vanishing, he came perfectly to himself, and when he saw his friends about him all in a profound silence, he pulled the spear out of the dead body, and would have thrust it into his own throat, if the guards had not held his hands, and by main force carried him away into his chamber, where all that night and the next day he wept bitterly, till being quite spent with lamenting and exclaiming, he lay as it were speechless, only fetching deep sighs.

His friends, apprehending some harm from his silence, broke into the room, but he took no notice of what any of them said, till Aristander putting him in mind of the vision he had seen concerning Clitus, and the prodigy that followed, as if all had come to pass by an unavoidable fatality, he then seemed to moderate his grief. They now brought Callisthenes, the philosopher, who was the near friend of Aristotle, and Anaxarchus of Abdera, to him. Callisthenes used moral language, and gentle and soothing means, hoping to find access for words of reason, and get a hold upon the passion. But Anaxarchus, who had always taken a course of his own in philosophy, and had a name for despising and slighting his contemporaries, as soon as he came in, cried out aloud, "Is this the Alexander whom the whole world looks to, lying here weeping like a slave, for fear of the censure and reproach of men to whom he himself ought to be a law and measure of equity, if he would use the right his conquests have given him as supreme lord and governor of all, and not be the victim of a vain and

idle opinion? Do not you know," said he, "that Jupiter is represented to have Justice and Law on each hand of him, to signify that all the actions of a conqueror are lawful and just?" With these and the like speeches, Anaxarchus indeed allayed the king's grief, but withal corrupted his character, rendering him more audacious and lawless than he had been.

ALEXANDER'S FEAST; OR THE POWER OF

MUSIC.

AN ODE ON ST. CECILIA'S DAY.

BY JOHN DRYDEN.

[JOHN DRYDEN: An English poet; born August 9, 1631; educated under Dr. Busby at Westminster School, and at Trinity College, Cambridge. The son of a Puritan, he wrote eulogistic stanzas on the death of Cromwell; but his versatile intellect could assume any phase of feeling, and he wrote equally glowing ones on the Restoration of 1660. His "Annus Mirabilis" appeared in 1667, and in 1668 he was made poet laureate. His "Essay on Dramatic Poesy" is excellent; but as a dramatist, though voluminous, he has left nothing which lives. His satire "Absalom and Achitophel" is famous; and his "Ode for St. Cecilia's Day" is considered the finest in the language.]

His valiant peers were placed around;

Their brows with roses and with myrtle bound:
So should desert in arms be crowned.

The lovely Thais by his side

Sat, like a blooming eastern bride,

In flower of youth and beauty's pride.

Happy, happy, happy pair!

None but the brave,

None but the brave,

None but the brave deserves the fair.

Timotheus placed on high

Amid the tuneful quiro,

With flying fingers touched the lyre:
The trembling notes ascend the sky,
And heavenly joys inspire.

The song began from Jove;

Who left his blissful seats above,
(Such is the power of mighty love!)
A dragon's fiery form belied the god :
Sublime on radiant spheres he rode,

When he to fair Olympia pressed,

And stamped an image of himself, a sovereign of the world.

The listening crowd admire the lofty sound.

A present deity! they shout around:

A present deity! the vaulted roofs rebound.

With ravished ears,

The monarch hears,
Assumes the god,
Affects to nod,

And seems to shake the spheres.

The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung;

Of Bacchus ever fair, and ever young;

The jolly god in triumph comes;

Sound the trumpets, beat the drums:
Flushed with a purple grace

He shows his honest face.

Now give the hautboys breath. He comes, he comes!

Bacchus, ever fair and young,

Drinking joys did first ordain:

Bacchus' blessings are a treasure,

Drinking is the soldier's pleasure;

Rich the treasure,

Sweet the pleasure;

Sweet is pleasure after pain.

Soothed with the sound the king grew vain;

Fought all his battles o'er again;

And thrice he routed all his foes; and thrice he slew the slain.

The master saw the madness rise;

His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes:

And while he heaven and earth defied,

Changed his hand and checked his pride.
He chose a mournful muse

Soft pity to infuse :

He sung Darius great and good,

By too severe a fate,

Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And weltering in his blood:
Deserted at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed,
On the bare earth exposed he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.

With downcast look the joyless victor sat,
Revolving in his altered soul

The various turns of fate below;

And now and then a sigh he stole;
And tears began to flow.

The mighty master smiled, to see
That love was in the next degree;
'Twas but a kindred sound to move,
For pity melts the mind to love.

Softly sweet in Lydian measures,
Soon he soothed his soul to pleasures.
War he sung is toil and trouble;
Honor but an empty bubble;
Never ending, still beginning,
Fighting still, and still destroying:
If the world be worth thy winning,
Think, O, think it worth enjoying!
Lovely Thais sits beside thee,

Take the good the gods provide thee.
The many rend the skies with loud applause;
So love was crowned, but music won the cause.
The prince, unable to conceal his pain,

Gazed on the fair,

Who caused his care,

And sighed and looked, sighed and looked,
Sighed and looked, and sighed again:

At length with love and wine at once oppressed,
The vanquished victor sunk upon her breast.

Now strike the golden lyre again;

A louder yet, and yet a louder strain.
Break his bands of sleep asunder,

And rouse him, like a rattling peal of thunder.
Hark, hark, the horrid sound

Has raised up his head;
As awaked from the dead,
And amazed he stares around.

Revenge! revenge! Timotheus cries,

See the furies arise!

See the snakes that they rear,

How they hiss in their hair!

And the sparkles that flash from their eyes!
Behold a ghastly band,

Each a torch in his hand!

These are Grecian ghosts, that in battle were slain, And unburied remain

Inglorious on the plain :
Give the vengeance due
To the valiant crew.

Behold how they toss their torches on high,
How they point to the Persian abodes,

And glittering temples of their hostile gods.
The princes applaud, with a furious joy;

And the king seized a flambeau, with zeal to destroy;
Thais led the way,

To light him to his prey,

And, like another Helen, fired another Troy.

Thus, long ago,

Ere heaving bellows learned to blow,

While organs yet were mute;

Timotheus to his breathing flute

And sounding lyre,

Could swell the soul to rage, or kindle soft desire.
At last divine Cecilia came,

Inventress of the vocal frame;

The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store,
Enlarged the former narrow bounds,

And added length to solemn sounds,

With nature's mother wit, and arts unknown before. Let old Timotheus yield the prize,

Or both divide the crown;

He raised a mortal to the skies;
She drew an angel down.