Michael Drayton (1563-1631). To the Harp. Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. 1880. Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry

Ralph Waldo Emerson, comp. (1803–1882). Parnassus: An Anthology of Poetry. 1880.

To the Harp

By Michael Drayton (1563–1631)


THAT instrument ne’er heard
Struck by the skilful bard
It strongly to awake,
But it the Internals scared
And made Olympus quake.	5

As those prophetic strings
Whose sounds with fiery wings
Drove fiends from their abode,
Touched by the best of kings,
That sung the holy ode.	10

So his when women slew
And it in Hebrus threw,
Such sounds yet forth it sent,
The banks to weep that drew
As down the stream it went.	15

And diversely though strong,
So anciently we sung
To it, that now scarce known
If first it did belong
To Greece, or if our own.	20

The Druidés imbrued
With gore on altars rude
With sacrifices crowned
In hollow woods bedewed,
Adored the trembling sound.	25