Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/254

 236 THE CLASSICAL HERITAGE [chap. poetry, quite different in form and contents from the partly impersonal sententiousness of the elegy, and from the epic, where the heroes, not the poet, speak and act. Both epic and elegy were uttered in moder- ate musical modes, which in the course of time were levelled into recitative. Such poetry could not be sung, sung fully, like Sappho^s love poems or Alcseus^ proud personal lyrics. With Sappho and Alcseus words and music were cast together so as to make one song. The music was syllabic, so to speak; one syllable, one note. Nor did the ethos of the music differ from the ethos of the words. The words, however passion- ate, avoided the monstrous and unmeasured ; the music avoided vagueness and excess. Its nature, like theirs, lay in measure and proportion. The Greeks were eager for the full round of life. Their intellects ordered and proportioned their de- sires. Many emotions entered their lives and are uttered in their poetry. Beyond reason's dictates they recognized no principle of exclusion. Greek life within its finitude was rounded and complete, both actually and in the idealizations of poetry and sculp- ture. Emotion contains within itself no leaven of pro- portionment. It may be strong or weak, violent or gentle; but it remains an impulse to satisfy itself. One emotion may quell another ; but, apart from such a conflict and from the exhaustion or satisfaction of an emotion, it is the intellect that imposes restraint and proportion. When these qualities are shown in emotional action, they are imposed by the intellect at the time, or else have been so constantly impressed upon the emotions as to have become spontaneous emo-