Upon Julia’s Voice
So smooth, so sweet, so silv'ry is thy voice
As, could they hear, the Damned would make no noise,
But listen to thee (walking in thy chamber)
Melting melodious words to lutes of amber.
Do not underestimate the power of the human voice. It can hurt, it can heal, it can delight and it can destroy. So do not underestimate the power of poetry—the human voice at its most personal and universal.
(Liza Voronin)
In this poem, Herrick is bewitched by the voice of a woman as she sings in her room, and we, in turn, are bewitched too. The name Julia gives her a homely quality, but she is an almost spiritual presence—heard but frustratingly not seen.
Her dulcet tones are “smooth”, “sweet” and “silver,” like a flash of angel’s wings. For him even the “Damned,” gnashing their teeth in the inferno, would fall silent to listen. She could be Beatrice to his Dante, if only she knew he existed!
Sound and sense cohere brilliantly to evoke the scene. For instance, in the first line, the s sound runs from “so” to the soft hiss in “voice,” binding the words into a single unit of meaning. This harmony is broken in the second line by the hard d of “damned” and the buzzing z in “noise” which doesn’t quite chime with “voice.”
It discomforts the ear as we confront the ugly thought of those condemned to perdition. But in the final lines, we return to an atmosphere of refinement—the m in “chamber” and “melting” placing a warm appetitive hum in our mouths as the tip of our tongue strikes the liquid “l” in “listen” and “lute.” Remarkably, nearly all of these sounds meet in the thematically central “melodious.”
As Herrick melts into delicious torment, the monosyllabic masculine rhymes of the first couplet yield to the female rhymes of the second. “Chamber” and “amber” ebb away into the air, producing a faint pause within which we strain to catch the distant “lutes of amber.”
How do we read this wonderfully nonsensical description? Does amber describe the soft glow of the music? It’s as if Julia’s song transforms the flames of hellfire into jewel-like, prismatic, golden notes that float off the page.
Nowadays, we’re unaccustomed to the lute, although recordings are easily available. (YouTube, as ever, is a treasure trove.) The sound is richer, more resonant, than the guitar, owing to the voluptuous pear-shaped body.
The gentle, precise plucking of the strings has a curious delicacy and spaciousness that quickly creates an inner quiet, pacifying the breath and freeing the mind to contemplate life’s most essential mysteries. It is no surprise that the songs of the period are fixated on love and death. Titles include: “When Laura Smiles,” “Come Sorrow Come,” and “In Darkness Let Me Dwell.”
When we recite the stanza (in Italian, literally chamber), Julia’s voice fine-tunes our own. Initially, we probably say the words in a monotone. But each time we go back to the lines, our voice takes on more expression. It becomes more musical. We learn where the pauses go. We discover which words to linger on and which ones to race through—which phrases are lento and which are allegro.
We find where we want to sound serious; and where we want to place a mocking tone—accompanied by a cocked eyebrow, a rakish grin. And, with the poem resonating in our mind, as we go about our day, we become more attuned to the voices around us.
In history, Julia looks forward to the women of the 18th century French salon, who brought the greatest thinkers together in a spirit of civility—one that mixes pleasure and reason.
In literature, she is reminiscent of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, whose parties create a convivial space at the heart of life. But Julia is an artist herself. Perhaps today, she would be a singer/songwriter playing a gig in a downtown bar, entrancing a rowdy mob of drinkers by the beauty of her composition.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674) was a 17th century English poet. Christopher Nield is a poet living in London.
