Behaviour that's admired is the path to power among people everywhere. - Seamus Heaney

I don't mean sound as decoration or elaboration, but the actual cadence that moves the thing along.

No trembling harp, no tuned timber, no tumbling hawk swerving through the hall, no swift horse pawing the courtyard. Pillage and slaughter have emptied the earth of entire peoples. And so he mourned as he moved about the world, deserted and alone, lamenting his unhappiness day and night, until death's flood brimmed up in his heart.

It was like the misery felt by an old man who has lived to see his son's body swing on the gallows. He begins to keen and weep for his boy, watching the raven gloat where he hangs: he can be of no help. The wisdom of age is worthless to him. Morning after morning, he wakes to remember that his child is gone; he has no interest in living on until another heir is born in the hall, now that his first-born has entered death's dominion forever. He gazes sorrowfully at his son's dwelling, the banquet hall bereft of all delight, the windswept hearthstone; the horsemen are sleeping, the warriors under ground; what was is no more. No tunes from the harp, no cheer raised in the yard. Alone with his longing, he lies down on his bed and sings a lament; everything seems too large, the steadings and the fields.