The song that she has chosen is one of the fanciful odes of the day.

Its chief merit to her lies in its alliance to the strange Eastern air which she heard at her first interview with the senator who presented her with the lute.
Paraphrased in English, the words of the composition would run thus:-- THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC I.
Spirit, whose dominion reigns Over Music's thrilling strains, Whence may be thy distant birth?
Say what tempted thee to earth?
Mortal, listen: I was born In Creation's early years, Singing, 'mid the stars of morn, To the music of the spheres.
Once as, within the realms of space, I view'd this mortal planet roll, A yearning towards they hapless race, Unbidden, filled my seraph soul! Angels, who had watched my birth, Heard me sigh to sing to earth; 'Twas transgression ne'er forgiv'n To forget my native Heav'n; So they sternly bade me go-- Banish'd to the world below.
II.
Exil'd here, I knew no fears; For, though darkness round me clung, Though none heard me in the spheres, Earth had listeners while I sung.
Young spirits of the Spring sweet breeze Came thronging round me, soft and coy, Light wood-nymphs sported in the trees, And laughing Echo leapt for joy! Brooding Woe and writhing Pain Soften'd at my gentle strain; Bounding Joy, with footstep fleet, Ran to nestle at my feet; While, aroused, delighted Love Softly kiss'd me from above! III.
Since those years of early time, Faithful still to earth I've sung; Flying through each distant clime, Ever welcome, ever young! Still pleas'd, my solace I impart Where brightest hopes are scattered dead; 'Tis mine--sweet gift!--to charm the heart, Though all its other joys have fled! Time, that withers all beside, Harmless past me loves to glide; Change, that mortals must obey, Ne'er shall shake my gentle sway; Still 'tis mine all hearts to move In eternity of love.
As the last sounds of her voice and her lute died softly away upon the still night air, an indescribable elevation appeared in the girl's countenance.

She looked up rapturously into the far, star-bright sky; her lip quivered, her dark eyes filled with tears, and her bosom heaved with the excess of the emotions that the music and the scene inspired.
Then she gazed slowly around her, dwelling tenderly upon the fragrant flower-beds that were the work of her own hands, and looking forth with an expression half reverential, half ecstatic over the long, smooth, shining plains, and the still, glorious mountains, that had so long been the inspiration of her most cherished thoughts, and that now glowed before her eyes, soft and beautiful as her dreams on her virgin couch.

Then, overpowered by the artless thoughts and innocent recollections which on the magic wings of Nature and Night came wafted over her mind, she bent down her head upon her lute, pressed her round, dimpled cheek against its smooth frame, and drawing her fingers mechanically over its strings, abandoned herself unreservedly to the reveries of maidenhood and youth.
Such was the being devoted by her father's fatal ambition to a lifelong banishment from all that is attractive in human art and beautiful in human intellect! Such was the daughter whose existence was to be one long acquaintance with mortal woe, one unvaried refusal of mortal pleasure, whose thoughts were to be only of sermons and fasts, whose action were to be confined to the binding up of strangers' wounds and the drying of strangers' tears; whose life, in brief, was doomed to be the embodiment of her father's austere ideal of the austere virgins of the ancient Church! Deprived of her mother, exiled from the companionship of others of her age, permitted no familiarity with any living being, no sympathies with any other heart, commanded but never indulged, rebuked but never applauded, she must have sunk beneath the severities imposed on her by her father, but for the venial disobedience committed in the pursuit of the solitary pleasure procured for her by her lute.

Vainly, in her hours of study, did she read the fierce anathemas against love, liberty, and pleasure, poetry, painting, and music, gold, silver, and precious stones, which the ancient fathers had composed for the benefit of the submissive congregations of former days; vainly did she imagine, during those long hours of theological instruction, that her heart's forbidden longings were banished and destroyed--that her patient and childlike disposition was bowed in complete subserviency to the most rigorous of her father's commands.