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       And cries of tortured ghosts!

       But, hark! he strikes the golden lyre;

       And see! the tortured ghosts respire,

       See, shady forms advance!

       Thy stone, O Sisyphus! stands still,

       Ixion rests upon his wheel.

       And the pale spectres dance!

       The Furies sink upon their iron beds,

       And snakes uncurl'd hang listening round their heads.

       5 'By the streams that ever flow,

       By the fragrant winds that blow

       O'er the Elysian flowers;

       By those happy souls who dwell

       In yellow meads of asphodel,

       Or amaranthine bowers;

       By the hero's armèd shades,

       Glittering through the gloomy glades;

       By the youths that died for love,

       Wandering in the myrtle grove,

       Restore, restore Eurydice to life:

       Oh take the husband, or return the wife!'

       He sung, and hell consented

       To hear the poet's prayer:

       Stern Proserpine relented,

       And gave him back the fair.

       Thus song could prevail

       O'er death and o'er hell,

       A conquest how hard and how glorious!

       Though fate had fast bound her

       With Styx nine times round her,

       Yet Music and Love were victorious.

       6 But soon, too soon, the lover turns his eyes:

       Again she falls, again she dies, she dies!

       How wilt thou now the fatal sisters move?

       No crime was thine, if 'tis no crime to love.

       Now under hanging mountains,

       Beside the falls of fountains,

       Or where Hebrus wanders,

       Rolling in meanders,

       All alone,

       Unheard, unknown,

       He makes his moan;

       And calls her ghost,

       For ever, ever, ever lost!

       Now with Furies surrounded,

       Despairing, confounded,

       He trembles, he glows,

       Amidst Rhodope's snows:

       See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies;

       Hark! Haemus resounds with the bacchanals' cries—

       Ah see, he dies!

       Yet even in death Eurydice he sung,

       Eurydice still trembled on his tongue,

       Eurydice the woods,

       Eurydice the floods,

       Eurydice the rocks and hollow mountains rung.

       7 Music the fiercest grief can charm,

       And Fate's severest rage disarm:

       Music can soften pain to ease,

       And make despair and madness please:

       Our joys below it can improve,

       And antedate the bliss above.

       This the divine Cecilia found,

       And to her Maker's praise confined the sound.

       When the full organ joins the tuneful choir,

       The immortal powers incline their ear;

       Borne on the swelling notes our souls aspire,

       While solemn airs improve the sacred fire;

       And angels lean from heaven to hear.

       Of Orpheus now no more let poets tell,

       To bright Cecilia greater power is given;

       His numbers raised a shade from hell,

       Hers lift the soul to heaven.