Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/123

Rh and heir to the throne of the Cæsars. Every schoolboy, from the poet's day to the present, knows how this touch of nature made Vergil and his imperial listeners kin:—

From the consecrating beauty of the Latin verse, in a new world and after nineteen centuries, is derived the legend—Manibus date lilia plenis—of an American hymn for Decoration Day. Out of the death of a youth as noble and gracious, in whom centred limitless hopes of future strength and joy, the spirit of poetry well may spring and declare—as from yonder tablet in this very place —that his little life was not fruitless, and that its harvest shall be perennial.

A passing reference may be made at this point to a class of verse elegantly produced in The Horatii. various times of culture and refinement: the hearty overflow of the taste, philosophy, good-fellowship, especially of the temperament, of its immediate maker. Thus old Anacreon started off, that Parisian of Teos. When you come to the Latin Horace, who like Vergil took his models from the Greek, you have, above all, the man himself before you: the