The Choir Invisible

They talked awhile of the best things in life, as they commonly did. At

length the parson said in his unworldly way: "I have one thing against Aristotle: he said the effect of the flute was bad

and exciting. He was no true Greek. John, have you ever thought how much of

life can be expressed in terms of music? To me every civilization has given

out its distinct musical quality; the ages have their peculiar tones; each

century its key, its scale. For generations in Greece you can hear nothing

but the pipes; during other generations nothing but the lyre. Think of the

long, long time among the Romans when your ear is reached by the trumpet

alone.

"Then again whole events in history come down to me with the effect of an

orchestra, playing in the distance; single lives sometimes like a great

solo. As for the people I know or have known, some have to me the sound of

brass, some the sound of wood, some the sound of strings. Only--so few, so

very, very few yield the perfect music of their kind. The brass is a little

too loud; the wood a little too muffled; the strings--some of the strings

are invariably broken. I know a big man who is nothing but a big drum; and I

know another whose whole existence has been a jig on a fiddle; and I know a

shrill little fellow who is a fife; and I know a brassy girl who is a pair

of cymbals; and once--once," repeated the parson whimsically, "I knew an old

maid who was a real living spinet. I even know another old maid now who is

nothing but an old music book--long ago sung through, learned by heart, and

laid aside: in a faded, wrinkled binding--yellowed paper stained by

tears--and haunted by an odour of rose-petals, crushed between the leaves of

memory: a genuine very thin and stiff collection of the rarest original

songs--not songs without words, but songs without sounds--the ballads of an

undiscovered heart, the hymns of an unanswered spirit."

After a pause during which neither of the men spoke, the parson went on: "All Ireland--it is a harp! We know what Scotland is. John," he exclaimed,

suddenly turning toward the dark figure lying just inside the shadow, "you

are a discord of the bagpipe and the harp: there's the trouble with you.

Sometimes I can hear the harp alone in you, and then I like you; but when

the bagpipe begins, you are worse than a big bumblebee with a bad cold."