Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/127

Rh makes us forget ourselves because he is so self-forgetful. He accepts unquestioningly things as they are. The world has now grown hoary with speculation, but at times, in art as in religious faith, except ye be as children ye cannot enter into the kingdom. We go back to the Iliad and the Odyssey, to the creative romance and poesy of all literatures, as strong men wearied seek again the woods and waters of their youth, for a time renewing the dream which, in sooth, is harder to summon than to dispel. Such a renewal is worth more than any moral, when following the charmed wanderings of the son of Laertes, by isle and mainland, over the sea whose waters still are blue and many-voiced, but whose mystic nymphs and demigods have fled forever; it is worth more than a philosophy,

The dramas of the Attic prime, although equally objective with these epics, are superb The Greek Dramatists. poetry, with motives not only creative but distinctly religious and ethical. They recognize and illustrate the eternal law which brings a penance upon somebody for every wrong, the