Page:Winter - from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau.djvu/153

Rh mumbled in silence. Strictly speaking, morality is not healthy. The undeserved joys which come uncalled, and make us more pleased than grateful, are they that sing.

In the steadiness and equanimity of music lies its divinity. It is the only assured tone. When men attain to speak with as settled a faith, and as firm assurance, their voices will ring and their feet march as do the feet of a soldier. The very dogs howl if time is disregarded. Because of the perfect time of this music-box, its harmony with itself, is its greater dignity and stateliness. This music is more nobly related for its more exact measure. So simple a difference as this more even pace raises it to the higher dignity. What are ears, what is time, that this particular series of sounds called a strain of music can be wafted down through the centuries from Homer to me, and Homer have been conversant with that same wandering and mysterious charm which never had a local habitation in space. I feel a sad cheer when I hear these lofty strains, because there must be something in me as lofty that hears. Ah, I hear them but rarely. They tell me the secrets of futurity. Where are its secrets wound up but in this box? So much hope had slumbered.—There are in music such strains as far surpass any faith which man ever