“p>The sportive hopes that used to chase their shifting shadows on,
Like children playing in the sun, are gone—for ever gone;
And on a careless, sullen peace, my double-fronted mind,
Like Janus, when his gates are shut, looks forward and behind.Apollo placed his harp, of old, awhile upon a stone,
Which has resounded since, when struck, a breaking harp string's tone;
And thus my heart, though wholly now from early softness free,
If touch'd, will yield the music yet, it first received of thee.<p”
A Picture Song.
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Edward Coote Pinkney 5
American poet, lawyer, sailor, professor, and editor 1802–1828Related quotes
“His mind fell asleep. His wits fell awake. His cock trembled like a harp-string.”
Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 42 (p. 881)
Harper of the Stones (1986).
Context: Again he struck the harp and began the jig. But this time it was such music as never came from a harp. It was the wildest, strangest music you ever heard, full of the sound of birds and the cries of animals and the wind and the rain, and the thunder and the lightning, and the dashing of huge waves against the shores of a great cold ocean that was formed from ice that had made its way slowly down from Ultima Thule. It was the sound of a world before mankind. It was the sound of the great merriment God must have known during the long days of Creation.

The Golden Legend http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10490/10490-h/10490-h.htm, Pt. IV, The Cloisters (1872).

“Every hidden cell is throbbing with music and life, every fiber thrilling like harp strings.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir

(27th September 1823) Extracts from my Pocket Book. Song
The London Literary Gazette, 1823