"Now the trumpet, hailing war with its terrible blare,
had thundered forth, speaking the preludes of its kindred warfare,
signaling with like bellowing a like uproar.
The horn wounded the air with a deceitful wound,
its wandering voice, its irregular voice, knows not
how to lie open to melodic measures, and scorns
to lend favor to art, and music marvels at its unbridled song.
And the pleasing voice of the lyre, more sweetly serene,
gave to these a feast of honeyed golden sound,
which, coloring the face of its varied song with variation,
now brings forth tears in its voice, feigning sorrow;
now paints, with false laughter's sound, its lying tones,
and the lyre, which in its sweet song always sings like the nightingale,
alluring more sweetly, and offers to the eyes the preludes of sleep
to read, and buries the murmurs of an offended mind,
the pipe, which by night keeps skillful and watchful vigil, indeed
repays with its voice, through its vigils, the losses of sleep:
it smiled upon the ears, by which all else of the heart's
stony hardness, and the harsh mind's roughness,
is forced to melt, and to put to flight its own rigidity.
This course of the voice, and so great a keenness of its winged sound,
the drums, with their dull-voiced tread, slowed down.
Yet the song was not entirely cheated of its honor,
if someone struck them with a subtle stroke of the lash,
and roused them, and lightly grazed them with a friendly stroke of the hand,
joined to the deep draw of the emptied air.
When with sweet clamor the pipes belched forth their wind,
the unequal likeness of this song, its discordant harmony,
indeed the like unlikeness, the dissenting agreement of voices,
was divided though joined, and joined though divided.
With a common, begging sound the cymbals rang out,
which never, in their clamoring, plead their case worthy enough
to our ears, scarcely deserving the hearing of men.
There was none greater, better, or more pleasing than that one
with which, alone, one closed the aforesaid songs,
the sweet song of the five-toned scale, whose footsteps,
whose voice, the rival crowd worshipped as song.
And she who contends with the lyre in discordant speech,
steeped in the honeycomb of the psaltery, sweetened in flavor,
rang out a pleasing voice, bearing the small gifts of song.
The sistrums, demanding the touch of a maiden's right hand,
voices of women, prophets of Mars and of war,
sang, with their voice, the miracles of a voice unheard before."