Books › Old violins, 1905 › scan 259
Scan 259
Old violins, 1905
18 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1POSTLUDE
3My task is ended.
4 The shades of the great melodious dead still seem to hover around me—as their echoes
6 "Roll from Pole to Pole,"
7and from
9 "Soul to soul,
10And grow for ever and for ever."
12Violins may be made hereafter, copies may deceive the eye, sounds bewilder the ear, but there will never again be an Amati or a Stradivari, any more than a Phidias or a Raphael.
14The age of discovery comes but once.
15It is big with the future up to the moment when it resumes in itself the golden heritage of the past. We may imitate, but we cannot reproduce; nor will that thrill of perfection—that emotion of eternal novelty which we experience in contemplating and sounding the Cremona masterpieces—ever electrify those who handle their pale effigies, uninformed by that secret magic which only appertains to absorbing things done for the first time.
17Hail! to the mighty dead, whose incommunicable touch is still felt by millions upon millions from generation to generation!
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