A Song for St. Cecilia's Day
“A Song for St. Cecilia's Day” is a 1687 poem by John Dryden, written for the feast of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. It is an irregular ode: a poem of praise whose stanzas vary in their arrangement. The University of Toronto's edition places it in the tradition of odes performed for the saint's feast on 22 November.[1]
Music and the poem
The poem presents musical harmony as a force that brings order to the universe. Successive passages associate instruments with different emotions: trumpets and drums with martial excitement, the flute with sadness, and the organ with religious devotion. Its closing chorus returns to the relationship between music and the created world.[1]
The words were first printed in London in 1687 as a single half-sheet. Giovanni Battista Draghi supplied a musical setting; surviving manuscript copies are recorded in the Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts.[2]
Dryden returned to the same festival in Alexander's Feast (1697). That is a separate poem, not another title for the 1687 work.[1]
Related topic
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 G. G. Falle, editor. “A Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687”. Representative Poetry Online, University of Toronto Libraries. Text, form and editorial notes. Accessed 10 October 2026.
- ↑ Peter Beal. “John Dryden”. Catalogue of English Literary Manuscripts, entry “A Song for St Cecilia's Day, 1687”, records DrJ 188–192. Accessed 10 October 2026.