Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/453

 No one can tell now how the memories of early sympathies may have grouped themselves in his mind as he looked out in later years from his home in Thrace on the sea over which he had sailed on the long-past day when he failed to save Amphipolis; but at least there is a twofold suggestiveness in those passages which touch on the glories of Athens. There is the feeling of the man who has never lost his love and admiration for the Athenian ideal; and there is also a certain reluctance to translate this ideal into concrete images, as if, in the words of Oedipus after his ruin, it were sweet for thought to dwell beyond the sphere of griefs. Perhaps in this very reticence the modern world may find a gain