On Everything
them for a pastime, because he heard a woman singing as he watched them, and there are landscapes which remain in the mind long after other things have faded, but so remain because one went at morning with other men along the road singing a walking song. And if it is a young man who wishes to make trial of this truth, he also has his test. For he will note as the years continue how, while all other pleasures lose their value and gradation, Song remains, until at last the notes of singing become like a sort of sacrament outside time, not subject to decay, but always nourishing men, for Song gives a permanent sense of futurity and a permanent sense of the presence of Divine things. Nor is there any pleasure which you will take away from middle age and leave it more lonely, than this pleasure of hearing Song.
It is that immortal quality in the business which makes it of a different kind from the other efforts of men. Write a good song and the tune leaps up to meet it out of nothingness. It clothes itself with tune, and once so clothed it continues on through generations, eternally young, always smiling, and always ready with strong hands for mankind. On this account every man who has written a song can be certain that he has done good; any man who has continually sung them can be certain that he has lived and has communicated life to others.
It is the best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
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