Page:The paradise of birds; an old extravaganza in a modern dress (IA cu31924013467364).pdf/12

viii the late great events had occurred, which seem to open out altered prospects for the nations of the world. Yet the conflict of principles, which the poem, however trivially, represents, will continue when the incidents of the war now raging are disregarded or forgotten. Nor can these great modern questions be treated in an extravaganza without an admixture of personal and political reference. The example of the great Greek comedian, who so powerfully represented on the stage of Athens the struggle between the material and the spiritual, the traditional and the progressive, may perhaps shield an English imitator from the blame of vulgarising the gravity of philosophy by the licence of contemporary allusion.