Page:Genius, and other essays.djvu/84

GENIUS AND OTHER ESSAYS key, and in certain moods not ineffective as a quaint and forceful meditation upon an ever-pressing theme. Their whole motive is condensed in the terse old formula, "All flesh is grass"; but a Sicilian poet, the pagan Moschus, found even this an insufficient image of the hopelessness of mortality. Let me give a naked translation (from the wonderful Epitaph of Bion), of the most sorrowful passage ever constructed outside of Hebrew writ:

The drear and homely verses of Mr. Lincoln's favorite poem have already gained the suffrage of those gentlemen whose favor is such an omen of longevity—the makers of school-books. I find it in the latest Reader, along with such selections as Lincoln's "Address at Gettysburg," Read's "Sheridan's Ride," Bayard Taylor's "Scott and the Veteran," Whittier's "Barbara Freitchie," and other new-born pieces, which are to the rising generation what the "Speech of Patrick Henry," "Marco Bozzaris," or "Stand! the Ground's Your Own, My Braves!" were to ourselves, a few—it seems a very few—summers and winters ago. [70]