f the Temple," a
graceful tribute to Herbert, we have the congenial title, "The Delights of
the Muses," opening with that exquisite composition:

"Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony,"

"Music's Duel." It is the story--a favorite one to the ears of our
forefathers two centuries ago--of the nightingale and the musician
contending with voice and instrument in alternate melodies, till the sweet
songstress of the grove falls and dies upon the lute of her rapt rival. It
is something more than a pretty tale. Ford, the dramatist, introduced it
briefly in happy lines in "The Lover's Melancholy," but Crashaw's verses
inspire the very sweetness and lingering pleasure of the contest. It is
high noon when the "sweet lute's master" seeks retirement from the heat,
"on the scene of a green plat, under protection of an oak," by the bank of
the Tiber. The "light-foot lady,"

"The sweet inhabitant of each glad tree,"

"entertains the music's soft report," which begins with a flying prelude,
to which the lady of the tree "carves out her dainty voice" with "quick
volumes of wild notes."

"His nimble hand's instinct then taught each string,
A cap'ring cheerfulness; and made them sing
To their own dance."

She

"Trails her plain ditty in one long-spun note
Through the sleek passage of her open throat:
A clear, unwrinkled song."

The contention invites every art of expression. The highest powers of the
lute are evoked in rapid succession closing with a martial strain:

"this lesson, too,
She gives him 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 thund'ring vollies float,
And roll themselves over her lubric throat
In panting murmurs, 'still'd out of her breast,
That ever-bubbling spring, the sugar'd nest
Of her delicious soul, that there does lie
Bathing in streams of liquid melody,
Music's best seed-plot; when in ripen'd airs
A golden-headed harvest fairly rears
His honey-dropping tops, ploughed by her breath,
Which there reciprocally laboreth.
In that sweet soil it seems a holy quire,
Founded to th' name of great Apollo's lyre;