Melancholy Music

How through the heart will sweep 

With hidden spell and strong

Those notes of sadness deep

That swell a mournful song!

Oh, still the charm prolong!

It touches on some tender string

Akin to pain whence pleasures spring.

‘Tis strange that so we love

Each melancholy air!

None in the choir above

In a plaintive voice will share,

All is triumphant there;

The chants on high to joy are sung,

The harps of heaven to rapture strung.

-       Bishop Mountain,[1] (First Anglican Bishop of Quebec, 1789-1863)

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[1] Jacob Mountain was a Canadian Anglican bishop, born at Thwaite Hall, Norfolk, England, in 1750.  He died near Quebec, Canada, 16 June, 1825. His grandfather, who was a great-grandson of the French essayist, Montaigne, was exiled from France after the revocation of the edict of Nantes.

Mountain was graduated at Cambridge in 1774, became a fellow in 1779, and, taking holy orders, held several important livings and a stall in Lincoln cathedral. These he owed to the friendship of William Pitt, who also procured his appointment in 1793 as the first Protestant bishop of Quebec. At that time there were only nine clergymen of the Church of England in Canada, and Quebec had no ecclesiastical edifice, no Episcopal residence, and no parsonage.

During the thirty-two years that elapsed before his death Bishop Mountain raised the church to the flourishing condition to which it afterward attained. He promoted the formation of missions, and the erection of church edifices in all the more populous townships. These latter he visited regularly, even when age and infirmity rendered so vast and fatiguing a circuit a painful undertaking. He served on several important occasions as a member, ex officio, of both the executive and legislative councils of the province, sat frequently in the court of appeals, and was a faithful and laborious servant of the public and of the crown. He attained note as a pulpit orator, and his self-sacrificing ministrations to the poor will long be remembered. He is the author of "Poetical Reveries" (London, 1777). (Source: famousamericans.net

The image at left is of his personal seal (Source: Heraldic America - pages.infinit.net/cerame/heraldicamerica)