Page:The Harvard Classics Vol. 51; Lectures.djvu/61

 Rh traditions. Even the gods are not absent; they play a dominant part in the action. Similarly in the popular ballads, the persons of the story, though drawn from humbler life, acquire a legendary interest which makes them typical figures and invests them with general importance. Such poetry, then, mirrors the ideals of the group or the nation. It is shaped and colored by the religious beliefs of the people or by vague questionings and vaguer answers as to the nature and meaning of things. By the kind of persons it sets in action, by the deeds they do and the passions they feel, this poetry becomes the projection and expression of life at its best as the whole people conceives it to be. It is the nation's interpretation of itself.

One characteristic these tales have which, apart from their form as verse, makes them poetry. The world which they give back is idealized. They come into being in response to men's love of a story. But the action which they embody is not the petty and commonplace round of daily affairs; the action is heightened and intensified. What we call the "glamour of romance" is over it. The free imagination is at work to fashion a more engaging and significant world. The stories told are of a time long past, in a happier and golden prime. This, they say, is the world as it was; would that it were so now, or might be again! Across the obscure yearnings of the present need, seen at a distance in the fresh light of mornings gone, the men of an elder age are figured of heroic mould. Their virtues, their passions, and their faults are nobler than the common breed. The world in which they move and do is an ampler scene, bathed in a freer air. This transfiguring of things, making them bright, intense, and full of a farther meaning, is the spirit of poetry.

As civilization progresses, the individual begins to define himself more sharply against the background of his group. The common effort of the group has wrought out for itself the arts of life; the store of culture is gradually enriched by collective striving. Then a time comes when the various functions of life tend to be distributed more and more among the separate members of the community; and to them it becomes possible to develop their own special gifts and aptitudes as potter, weaver, smith. One day a