What a
pace! And with what a grace beside!
Oh Reinecke, beautiful thou art, of a surety, in spite of thy great
naughtiness. Art thou some fallen spirit, doomed to be hunted for
thy sins in this life, and in some future life rewarded for thy
swiftness, and grace, and cunning, by being made a very messenger of
the immortals? Who knows? Not I.
I am rising fast to Pistol's vein. Shall I ejaculate? Shall I
notify? Shall I waken the echoes? Shall I break the grand silence
by that scream which the vulgar view-halloo call?
It is needless; for louder and louder every moment swells up a sound
which makes my heart leap into my mouth, and my mare into the air.
Music? Well-beloved soul of Hullah, would that thou wert here this
day, and not in St. Martin's Hall, to hear that chorus, as it pours
round the fir-stems, rings against the roof above, shatters up into a
hundred echoes, till the air is live with sound! You love madrigals,
and whatever Weekes, or Wilbye, or Orlando Gibbons sang of old. So
do I. Theirs is music fit for men: worthy of the age of heroes, of
Drake and Raleigh, Spenser and Shakspeare: but oh that you could
hear this madrigal! If you must have 'four parts,' then there they
are.
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