Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/64

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS of his kind. The clear vision demands, and for the moment seems to carry with it, a new gift of expression. Men speak with tongues they never knew before; yet, when the Pentecost is over, relapse into their ordinary existence, and wonder no less than others at what it has been given them to do.

A chance lyric composed in this wise, and the sole performance which has interested the world in its author, has frequently seemed to the latter so light a thing that he has neglected to identify his name with its success. Scores of the ballads which mark the growth of our English poetry, and are now gathered and edited as a portion of its history, have given no fame to the minor poets who sang them,

Doubtless not a few of those notable anonymous pieces, which people love to attribute to some favorite author or hero, have been, could we only determine it, the single productions of amateurs. There is "The Lye," for example, which is claimed for Sir Walter Raleigh, and is quite good enough for him to have written—is better than anything established as his own—yet whose authorship is still in escrow between Raleigh, Sylvester, and others of less repute. There are some plaintive stanzas, which commence, "Defiléd is my name full sore," and profess to be the lament of Queen Anne Boleyne from her prison cell, but are undoubtedly the work of another hand. The [50]