but all was peace and joy with them.  There were no great aspirations, no noble achievements, no tending toward progress and a higher life.  On an evil day, Lamech, when engaged in athletic sport, accidentally struck and killed his fairest boy.  All was then changed, the old love and peace passed away; but good rather than evil came, for man began to lead a larger life.

  And a new spirit from that hour came o’er
  The race of Cain:  soft idlesse was no more,
  But even the sunshine had a heart of care,
  Smiling with hidden dread—­a mother fair
  Who folding to her breast a dying child
  Beams with feigned joy that but makes sadness mild. 
  Death was now lord of Life, and at his word
  Time, vague as air before, new terrors stirred,
  With measured wing now audibly arose
  Throbbing through all things to some unknown close. 
  Now glad Content by clutching Haste was torn,
  And Work grew eager, and Devise was born. 
  It seemed the light was never loved before,
  Now each man said, “’Twill go and come no more.” 
  No budding branch, no pebble from the brook,
  No form, no shadow, but new dearness took
  From the one thought that life must have an end;
  And the last parting now began to send
  Diffusive dread through love and wedded bliss,
  Thrilling them into finer tenderness. 
  Then Memory disclosed her face divine,
  That like the calm nocturnal lights doth shine
  Within the soul, and shows the sacred graves,
  And shows the presence that no sunlight craves,
  No space, no warmth, but moves among them all;
  Gone and yet here, and coming at each call,
  With ready voice and eyes that understand,
  And lips that ask a kiss, and dear responsive hand. 
  Thus to Cain’s race death was tear-watered seed
  Of various life and action-shaping need. 
  But chief the sons of Lamech felt the stings
  Of new ambition, and the force that springs
  In passion beating on the shores of fate. 
  They said, “There comes a night when all too late
  The mind shall long to prompt the achieving hand,
  The eager thought behind closed portals stand,
  And the last wishes to the mute lips press
  Buried ere death in silent helplessness. 
  Then while the soul its way with sound can cleave,
  And while the arm is strong to strike and heave,
  Let soul and arm give shape that will abide
  And rule above our graves, and power divide
  With that great god of day, whose rays must bend
  As we shall make the moving shadows tend. 
  Come, let us fashion acts that are to be,
  When we shall lie in darkness silently,
  As our young brother doth, whom yet we see
  Fallen and slain, but reigning in our will
  By that one image of him pale and still.”

Death brings discord and sorrow into a world once happy and unaspiring, but it also brings a spiritual eagerness and a divine craving.  Jabal began to tame the animals and to cultivate the soil, Tubal-Cain began to use fire and to work metals, while Jubal discovered song and invented musical instruments.  Out of the longing and inner unrest which death brought, came the great gift of music.  It had power to