Imagine the world beginning as a single crashing cymbal, with wind scraping across a hollow, lonely landscape. Marvell’s poem tracks music’s mythic rise from that noise. A figure named Jubal — the biblical father of music — appears and literally calls echoes out of caves, housing them together in a city built from organ pipes. From that union of sweet and strong voices, different instruments branch out like settlers: lutes, viols, cornets, each claiming a method and a mood, from earthly triumphs to heavenly choirs. The speaker feels genuine awe at this crafted soundscape, as music becomes a vast, living mosaic that conquers the ear and fills the space between ground and sky. Yet a lovely pivot closes the poem: all those victorious notes are asked to bow to an even gentler conqueror — one who shies away from praise but would gladly blend those sounds into divine hallelujahs. The mood is stately and warm, mixing intellectual play with quiet reverence.
Music's Empire — Summary
First was the world as one great cymbal made, Where jarring winds to infant Nature played. All music was a solitary sound, To hollow rocks and murm'ring fountains bound.
Jubal first made the wilder notes agree; And Jubal tuned music's Jubilee; He call'd the echoes from their sullen cell, And built the organ's city where they dwell.
Each sought a consort in that lovely place, And virgin trebles wed the manly bass. From whence the progeny of numbers new Into harmonious colonies withdrew.
Some to the lute, some to the viol went, And others chose the cornet eloquent, These practicing the wind, and those the wire, To sing men's triumphs, or in Heaven's choir.
Then music, the mosaic of the air, Did of all these a solemn noise prepare; With which she gain'd the empire of the ear, Including all between the earth and sphere.
Victorious sounds! yet here your homage do Unto a gentler conqueror than you; Who though he flies the music of his praise, Would with you Heaven's Hallelujahs raise.