Page:Essays and phantasies by James Thomson.djvu/218

 206 Phædrus, "He who has been recently initiated, when he sees a godlike countenance, or some bodily form that presents a good imitation of beauty, at first shudders, and some of the old terrors come over him."

The educated, the intelligent, the clever, by thousands, hear these songs sung, and read them in books, and think that they perfectly enjoy and comprehend; and they can discourse very profoundly about metres and diction and canons of art; but they never hear the undertone, and never have vision of the interior illumination, and are never rapt away in the ecstasy: thus the very soul of the poetry must, in truth, ever remain for them a music unheard, a light unseen, a language unknown embodied in their familiar mother-tongue.

Serious parodies of these divine songs abound in every age, and are welcomed by the uninitiate (who are usually what we call persons of liberal culture, for the poor and the ignorant remain grandly indifferent to all such attempts) as the most beautiful utterance of the inmost mysteries of this veritable Secret Society; and the authors thereof win during their lifetime wealth and honour and renown. For many of them can copy with marvellous adroitness the rhythms and rhymes and melodious phrases which are much loved by the true brotherhood, so that not only by others but also by themselves they are believed to be genuine bards. But when one who is initiate hears or reads their productions, he discerns that they are as fair bodies without souls; for the music and the splendour of infinity are not within them, and they are utterly unrelated to eternity.

Many, however, who are not learned and who are quite without profitable talents, shepherd youths and farm maidens, men in great cities who will never get on in the world, rude mountaineers familiar with sounding storms,