(The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,

Their muse, their siren, harmless siren she):
There stood she listening, and did entertain
The music's soft report, and mold the same
In her own murmurs; that whatever mood
His curious fingers lent, her voice made good.
The man perceived his rival, and her art;
Disposed to give the light-foot lady sport,
Awakes his lute, and 'gainst the fight to come
Informs it in a sweet præludium

Of closer strains, and e'er the war begin,
He lightly skirmishes on every string
Charged with a flying touch; and straightway she
Carves out her dainty voice as readily
Into a thousand sweet distinguished tones,
And reckons up in soft divisions

Quick volumes of wild notes, to let him know,
By that shrill taste, she could do something too.
His nimble hand's instinct then taught each
string

A capering cheerfulness, and made them sing
To their own dance; now negligently rash
He throws his arm, and with a long-drawn dash
Blends all together; then distinctly trips
From this to that, then quick returning skips,
And snatches this again, and pauses there.
She measures every measure, everywhere.
Meets art with art; sometimes, as if in doubt
Not perfect yet, and fearing to be out,
Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note,
Through the sleek passage of her open throat,
A clear, unwrinkled song; then doth she point it
With tender accents, and severely joint it
By short diminutives, that being reared
In controverting warbles, evenly shared,
With her sweet self she wrangles: he, amazed
That from so small a channel should be raised
The torrent of a voice whose melody
Could melt into such sweet variety,
Strains higher yet, that, tickled with rare art,
The tattling strings, each breathing in his part,
Most kindly do fall out: the grumbling bass
In surly groans disdains the treble's grace ;
The high-percht treble chirps at this, and chides,
Until his finger (moderator) hides
And closes the sweet quarrel, rousing all,
Hoarse, shrill, at once; as when the trumpets call
Hot Mars to the harvest of death's field, and woo
Men's hearts into their hands; this lesson too
She gives them back; her supple breast thrills out
Sharp airs, and staggers in a warbling doubt
Of dallying sweetness, hovers o'er her skill,
And folds in waved notes, with a trembling bill,
The pliant series of her slippery song;
Then starts she suddenly into a throng
Of short thick sobs, whose thundering volleys

float,

And roll themselves over her lubric throat

In panting murmurs, stilled out of her breast;
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugared nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody;
Music's best seed-plot; when in ripened airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears
His honey-dropping tops plowed by her breath
Which there reciprocally laboreth.

In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire,
Sounded to the name of great Apollo's lyre;
Whose silver roof rings with the sprightly notes
Of sweet-lipped angel-imps, that swill their
throats

In cream of morning Helicon, and then
Prefer soft anthems to the ears of men,

To woo them from their beds, still murmuring
That men can sleep while they their matins sing
(Most divine service), whose so early lay
Prevents the eyelids of the blushing day.
There might you hear her kindle her soft voice
In the close murmur of a sparkling noise;
And lay the groundwork of her hopeful song,
Still keeping in the forward stream so long,
Till a sweet whirlwind (striving to get out)
Heaves her soft bosom, wanders round about,
And makes a pretty earthquake in her breast,
Till the fledged notes at length forsake their nest,
Fluttering in wanton shoals, and to the sky,
Winged with their own wild echoes, prattling fly.
She opes the floodgate, and lets loose a tide
Of streaming sweetness, which in state doth ride
On the waved back of every swelling strain,
Rising and falling in a pompous train ;
And while she thus discharges a shrill peal
Of flashing airs, she qualifies their zeal
With the cool epode of a graver note;
Thus high, thus low, as if her silver throat
Would reach the brazen voice of war's hoarse bird;
Her little soul is ravished, and so poured
Into loose ecstasies, that she is placed
Above herself, music's enthusiast.

Shame now and anger mixed a double stain
In the musician's face: "Yet, once again,
Mistress, I come now reach a strain, my lute,
Above her mock, or be forever mute.
Or tune a song of victory to me,
Or to thyself sing thine own obsequy."
So said, his hands sprightly as fire he flings,
And with a quavering coyness tastes the strings.
The sweet-lipped sisters musically frighted,
Singing their fears are fearfully delighted;
Trembling as when Apollo's golden hairs
Are fanned and frizzled in the wanton airs
Of his own breath, which, married to his lyre,
Doth tune the spheres, and make heaven's self

look higher;

From this to that, from that to this he flies, 1 Feels music's pulse in all her arteries: