Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/102

80 We are provincial dwellers in Time; we are, few of us, explorers, and many who do explore Time, explore it as moles do a field. We do not scan the vast stretch of Time from aloft. We are patient plodders, crawling on hands and knees and peering and poring over little plots of eternity. Few, very few of us, have the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling. But if we had the poet's eye and the poet's point of view we could see the time-that-was existent now, we could see it glowing and breathing and singing. We could see every event and circumstance in history—in living action, discharging itself and yet not getting discharged, rampant.

Keats, looking at the bas-relief on a Grecian urn, had the true poetic vision. He realised the ever-living quality of a moment of life poised in a picture. So he looked at the living groups on the ancient urn and sang:—

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

He looked at the Greek shepherds with their pipes and heard the liquid melody float away, and he cried:—

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.

What enchanted the poet was that though the sculpture was all action, it was only a single moment. He felt that all was living, all moving, all pro-