Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/26

xvi mistake of believing that a great work loses its power as time goes on. Thus Shakespeare's creations have been pronounced outworn, because he was the last great "poet of feudalism." We might as well say that the truth to human life displayed in Genesis and Exodus, or the synthetic beauty of the Parthenon, or the glory of the Sistine Madonna, will grow ineffective, forgetting that these have the vitality which appertains to the lasting nature of things. No poet can ever outrival Shakespeare, except by a more exceeding insight and utterance. It is well said that great art is always modern, and this is true whether a romantic or a realistic method prevails. Doubtless the prerogative of song is a certain abandonment to the ideal, but this, on the other hand, becomes foolishness unless the real, the truth of earth and nature, is kept somewhere in view. Still, if any artist may be expected to pursue by instinct a romantic method, it is the poet, the very essence of whose gift is a sane ideality. The arbitrary structure of poetry invites us to a region out of the common, and this without danger of certain perils attending the flights of prose romance.

While the poetic drama, for example, must be realistic in its truth to life,—first, as to human nature, and, second, in fidelity to the manners of a given time and place,—it shortly fails unless surcharged