Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/205

Rh noblest and the loveliest poems,—simplicity of art and of feeling. There are no better examples of this, as to motive and construction, than those two episodes of Ruth and Esther. Written in the poetic Hebrew, though not in verse, Examples, and a contrast. they fulfil every requisition of the prose idyl: the one a pure pastoral, the other a civic and royal idyl of the court of a mighty king. There is not a phrase, an image, an incident, too much or too little in either; not a false note of atmosphere or feeling. These works, so naïvely exquisite, are deathless. Their charm is even greater as time goes on. Now, a remarkable novel has been written in our own day, "Anna Karénina," which chances to be composed of two idyls,—one distinctly of the city and the court, the other of the country and the harvest-field. These two cross and interweave, and blend and separate, until the climacteric tragedy and lesson of the book. Powerful as this work is, it has little chance of great endurance, inasmuch as its structure and detail are complex even for this complex period. It is at the opposite extreme from the simplicity of those matchless idyls of the Old Testament.

Nevertheless, that idyllic perfection came from a really advanced art. However spontaneous Nature of the antique simplicity. of impulse, it was not perpetuated through the uncertain process of oral transmission, but by a polished scriptural text. Absolutely primitive song was often a rhapsody, and not suited to