ALEXANDER'S FEAST; OR, THE POWER OF MUSIC: An Ode in Honor of St. Cecilia's Day. 'Twas at the royal feast, 1 for Persia won By Philip's warlike son: Aloft in awful state The godlike hero sate On his imperial throne: His valiant peers were placed around; Their brows with roses and with myrtles bound: 2 (So should desert in arms be crowned.) The lovely Thais, 3 by his side, Sate like a blooming Eastern bride In flower of youth and beauty's pride. Happy, happy, happy pair! None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair. Chorus. Happy, happy, happy pair! None but the brave, None but the brave, None but the brave deserves the fair. Timotheus, 4 placed on high Amid the tuneful quire, With flying fingers touched the lyre: The trembling notes ascend the sky, And heavenly joys inspire. The song began from Jove, 5 Who left his blissful seats above, (Such is the power of mighty love.) A dragon's fiery form belied the god: Sublime on radiant spires he rode. The listening crowd admire the lofty sound, A present deity, 6 they shout around; A present deity, the vaulted roofs rebound: With ravish'd ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god, Affects to nod, 7 And seems to shake the spheres. Chorus. With ravish'd ears The monarch hears, Assumes the god, Affects to nod, And seems to shake the spheres. The praise of Bacchus then, the sweet musician sung, Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young: The jolly god in triumph comes; Sound the trumpets; beat the drums; Flush'd with a purple grace, He shows his honest face: Now give the hautboys 8 breath; he comes! he comes! Bacchus, ever fair and young, Drinking joys did first ordain; Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, Drinking is the soldier's pleasure; Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure; Sweet is pleasure after pain. Chorus. Bacchus' blessings are a treasure, Drinking is the soldier's pleasure; Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure; Sweet is pleasure after pain. Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain; Fought all his battles o'er again; And thrice he routed all his foes; and thrice he slew the slain. 9 The master saw the madness rise; His glowing cheeks, his ardent eyes; And, while he Heaven and Earth defied, Changed his hand, and check'd his pride. He chose a mournful muse, Soft pity to infuse: He sung Darius 10 great and good, By too severe a fate, Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen, Fallen from his high estate, And welt'ring in his blood; Deserted at his utmost need, By those his former bounty fed: On the bare earth expos'd he lies, 11 With not a friend to close his eyes. 12 With downcast looks the joyless victor sate, Revolving in his alter'd soul The various turns of chance below; And, now and then, a sigh he stole, 13 And tears began to flow. Chorus. Revolving in his alter'd soul The various turns of chance below; And, now and then, a sigh he stole, And tears began to flow. The mighty master smil'd to see That love was in the next degree: 'Twas but a kindred sound to move, For pity melts the mind to love. 14 Softly sweet, in Lydian 15 measures, Soon he sooth'd his soul to pleasures. War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honor, but an empty bubble; 16 Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying; If the world be worth thy winning, Think, oh think it worth enjoying! Lovely Thais sits beside thee, Take the good the gods provide thee. The many 17 rend the air with loud applause; So Love was crown'd, but Music won the cause. The prince, unable to conceal his pain, Gaz'd on the fair Who caus'd his care, And sigh'd and look'd, 18 sigh'd and look'd, Sigh'd and look'd, and sigh'd again; At length, with love and wine at once oppress'd, The vanquish'd victor sunk upon her breast.

This song was written in 1697. Lord Bolingbroke relates that, calling upon the poet one morning, Dryden said to him: "I have been up all night; my musical friends made me promise to write them an ode for their Feast of St. Cecilia, and I was so struck with the subject which occurred to me that I could not leave it till I had completed it: here it is, finished at one sitting."

The poem was first set to music by one Jeremiah Clarke, a steward of the Musical Society, whose members had solicited Dryden to write it. In 1736 it was rearranged by the great composer Handel, and again presented at a public performance.

M. Taine says, "His 'Alexander's Feast' is an admirable trumpet-blast, in which metre and sound impress upon the nerves the emotions of the mind, a master-piece of rapture and of art, which Victor Hugo alone has come up to."

"As a piece of poetical mechanism to be set to music, or recited in alternate strophe and anti-strophe," says Hazlitt, "nothing can be better."

"This ode is Dryden's greatest and best work."—Macaulay.

1. royal feast. About the year b.c. 331, Alexander the Great, having overthrown the Persian Empire, held a great feast at Persepolis in celebration of his victories. At the close of the revelries, instigated, it is said, by Thais, his Athenian mistress, he set fire with his own hand to the great palace of Persepolis; and a general massacre of the inhabitants ensued. The ruins of the city and palace are still to be seen in a beautiful valley watered by the river Araxes—now called Bendemir—not far from the border of the Carmanian Desert.2. with roses and with myrtles. At the banquets of the Greeks it was the custom of the guests to wear garlands of roses and myrtles.3. Thais. "Her name is best known from the story of her having stimulated the Conqueror, during a great festival at Persepolis, to set fire to the palace of the Persian kings; but this anecdote, immortalized as it has been by Dryden's famous ode, appears to rest on the sole authority of Cleitarchus, one of the least trustworthy of the historians of Alexander, and is in all probability a mere fable." After the death of Alexander, Thais became the wife of Ptolemy Lagus.4. Timotheus. A famous flute-player from Thebes. Another and more celebrated Timotheus, "the poet of the later Athenian dithyramb," was a native of Miletus and died about the time of Alexander's birth.5. Alexander claimed to be the son of Jupiter Ammon; and when he visited the temple of that god, in the Libyan Desert, he was received by the priests and honored as such. See Plutarch's Life of Alexander.6. present deity. See Psalm xlvi. 1.7. affects to nod. See Homer's "Iliad." I, 528-530: "Jove spake, and nodded his dark brow, and the ambrosial locks waved from his immortal head; and he made great Olympus quake."8. hautboys. Oboes. French hautbois. Wind instruments resembling the clarionet.

Bacchus. Compare Shakespeare:

—Antony and Cleopatra, Act ii, sc. 7.9. thrice he slew the slain. How could he slay the slain?10. Darius. At the time of this feast at Persepolis, Darius, the vanquished king of Persia, was still living, although a fugitive. In the following year Alexander pursued him into the Parthian Desert, where he was murdered by the satrap of Bactria. By order of Alexander, the body of the unfortunate king was sent to Persepolis, to be buried in the tombs of the kings.11. expos'd he lies. Dryden seems to have written this under the impression that Darius had been killed before the time of the great feast at Persepolis.12. close his eyes. Compare this with the lines from Pope ("Elegy on an Unfortunate Lady"):

13. a sigh he stole. Sighed silently. His sighs when the result of pity were not very distinctly uttered. Compare Shakespeare:

—As You Like It, Act ii, sc. 7.

And then read, in the next stanza, how Alexander sighed when moved by love.14. pity melts the mind to love. Compare:

—Young's Night Thoughts, III, 106.

—Southern's Oroonoko, II, 1.15. Lydian measures. The people of Lydia were noted for the effeminacy of their manners. And Lydian music was peculiarly soft and voluptuous.

—Milton's L'Allegro, 135.

—Spenser's Faerie Queene, III, 1.

Observe the change in metre in the ten lines beginning "Softly sweet." What does the word sweet modify?16. Honor, but an empty bubble. So Shakespeare:

—1 Henry IV., Act v, sc. 1.17. The many. The multitude.18. sigh'd and look'd. He no longer steals a sigh, as he did when pitying Darius. See note 13, above.19. Break his bands of sleep. The music now is very different from the Lydian measures which "soothed his soul to pleasures." "Suidas," says Dr. Warton, "mentions the Orthian style in music, in which Timotheus is said to have played to Alexander; and one Antigenidas inflamed this prince still more by striking into what were called Harmatian measures. Quintus Curtius gives a minute description of the burning of the palace at Persepolis, when Alexander was accompanied by Thais. But it does not appear in the accurate Arrian that Thais had any share in this transaction. Arrian, but more so Aristobulus, endeavored to exculpate Alexander from the charge of frequent ebriety; but Menander plainly mentions the drunkenness of Alexander as proverbial."20. Furies. The Eumenides, or avengers of evil. They are variously represented by the poets. Æschylus describes them as having black bodies, hair composed of twining snakes, and eyes dripping with blood. 21. Grecian ghosts. The spirits of the Greek warriors in Alexander's army who had been slain by the Persians.22. crew. This word was formerly used to designate any associated multitude or assemblage of persons. It is now restricted to a ship's company, except when occasionally used in a bad sense. From A.-S. cread or cruth, a crowd.23. Thais led the way, etc. See note 19, above. Neither Thais nor Helen actually fired any city. What the poet means to say is that, as Helen was the cause of the destruction of Troy, so Thais instigated the burning of Persepolis.24. organs. The word organ originally denoted but a single pipe, and hence the older English writers, when referring to the complete instrument, generally used the word in the plural number. "Father Schmidt and other famous organ-builders flourished in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The organ in Temple Church, London, was built by Schmidt in Charles II.'s time."25. vocal frame. The organ—the grand instrument of church music—so perfect that it may literally be said to speak. See introductory note to Pope's "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," page 153.26. St. Cecilia, according to the story in the "Golden Legend," was under the immediate protection of an angel. But it was not her sweet playing, but her spotless purity, that brought the angel to earth, not to listen, but to be "a heavenly guard."

Compare these last four lines with those at the close of Pope's Ode.

Dr. Warton says of "Alexander's Feast": "If Dryden had never written anything but this ode, his name would have been immortal, as would that of Gray, if he had never written anything but his 'Bard.' It is difficult to find new terms to express our admiration of the variety, richness, and melody of its numbers; the force, beauty, and distinctness of its images; the succession of so many different passions and feelings; and the matchless perspicuity of its diction. No particle of it can be wished away, but the epigrammatic turn of the four concluding lines."

Hallam says: "This ode has a few lines mingled with a far greater number ill conceived and ill expressed; the whole composition has that spirit which Dryden hardly ever wanted, but it is too faulty for high praise. It used to pass for the best work of Dryden and the best ode in the language. But few lines are highly poetical, and some sink to the level of a common drinking song. It has the defects as well as the merits of that poetry which is written for musical accompaniment."

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