throbbed like drums, terrible in
its persistence and yet beautiful too; and this, I knew, represented
the mechanical basis of the world, the processes which science
knows as 'laws of motion' and the like, but which really, as I then
perceived, might more aptly be described as the more inveterate of
Nature's habits. Upon this foundation, which varied, indeed, but by
almost imperceptible gradations, was built up an infinitely complex
structure of intermediate parts, increasing from below upwards in
freedom, ease and beauty of form, till high above all floated on the
ear snatches of melody, haunting, poignant, meltingly tender, or,
as it might be, martial and gay exquisite in themselves, yet never
complete, fragments rather, as it seemed, of some theme yet to come,
which they had hardly time to suggest before they were torn, as it
were, from their roots and sent drifting down the stream, to reappear
in new settings, richer combinations, and fairer forms; and these, I
knew, were symbols of the lives and deaths of conscious beings.

"As this character of the music and its representative meaning grew
gradually clearer to me, there began to mingle with my delight a
certain feeling of anguish. For while, on the one hand, I passionately
desired to hear given out in full the theme which as yet had been only
suggested in fragmentary hints, on the other, I knew that with its
appearance the music would come to a close, just at the moment when
its cessation would involve the keenest revulsion of feeling. And this
moment, I felt, was rapidly approaching. The rhythm grew more and
more rapid, the instruments scaled higher and higher, the tension of
chromatic progressions was strained to what seemed breaking point,
till suddenly, with an effect as though a stream, long pent in a
gorge, had escaped with a burst into broad sunny meadows, the whole
symphony broke away into the major key, and high and clear, chanted,
as it seemed, on ten thousand trumpets, silver, aethereal, and
exquisitely sweet for all their resonant clangour, I heard the
ultimate melody of things. For a moment only; for, as I had foreseen,
with the emergence of that air, the music came abruptly to a close;
and I found myself sitting bathed in tears at the door of the tower on
the opposite side to that by which I had entered; and there once more
was the land of silence, twilight, and infinite space, with the
souls going down the river, in and out, in and out, futile, triv