Page:Echoes from East and West.pdf/13

Rh or sections are pitchedpitted [sic] against each other; but I have not applied this principle in translating Vedic triplets, quatrains, quintuplets and sestets, because there the rhythm and sense seem to me almost confined to each line. Lastly, with regard to foreign names, they are to be pronounced under the English laws of accent, with the exception of a few classical names; and I may add that in accordance with Elizabethan practice, names of Greek gods and goddesses have been given in their more familiar and more easily pronounced Latin forms—only we should not confound Greek and Roman mythology.

It should be remarked that the main features of the book are variety and diversity from the vointpoint [sic] of view of language, matter, manner, and metre. Poems have been brought together sometimes for comparison, sometimes for contrast, sometimes for showing evolution of thought, overflow of ideas and sentiments from country to country, and so on. To enhance the interest of the reader, I have introduced a few philosophical poems from the East, and a few devotional poems from both East and West. Wherever the opening or a part of a great poem has been given in these pages, it is implied that some knowledge of the whole will always be found edifying, because of the side-lights thrown on racial characteristics, which are more or less insular, and on human sentiments, which are bound to be universal. In fact, Life in its insular intensity, and in its universal extensity, and—to go a step further—in its eternal protensity, is the highest goal of study in Art. It is this three-sided Life which Homer and Shakespeare saw mostly, but of which a good deal remains a sealed book to us mortals. Do you know of anyone, young or