Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/64

34 against all odds. Again, the poets have walked in lowly ways, and each by himself; they have no proud temporal league and station, like the churchmen's, to make them timid of innovation, of any new force that may shake their roof-trees. They have been gipsies, owning nothing, yet possessed of everything without the care of it. At last they see this usufruct denied them; they are bidden to surrender even their myths and fallacies and inspiring illusions. With a grace that might earlier have been displayed by the theologians, they are striving to adapt art to its conditions, though at the best it is a slow process to bring their clientage to the new Through night to light. ideality. Though the imagery and diction which have served their use, and are now absurd, must cease, the creation of something truer and nobler is not the work of a day, and of a leader, but of generations. So there is a present struggle, and the poets are sharing the discomfort of the dogmatists. The forced marches of knowledge in this age do insensibly perturb them, even give the world a distaste for a product which, it fears, we must distrust. The new learning is so radiant, so novel, and therefore seemingly remarkable, that of itself it satiates the world's imagination. Even the abashed idealists, though inspired by it, feel it becoming to fall into the background. Some of them recognize it with stoical cynicism and stern effect. In Balzac's "The Search for the Absolute," Balthazar's wife, suffering agonies, makes an attempt to