Page:The Classical Heritage of the Middle Ages.djvu/253

CHAPTER IX CHRISTIAN POETRY I. Classic Metre and Christian Emotion In order to appreciate the formal and substantial changes through which poetry passed in its course from paganism to Christianity, and from the antique to the mediaeval, a clear idea is needed of some gen- eral characteristics of Greek verse. The due appre- ciation and proportionment of life's elements was a principle of Greek life and art and literature. It forbade excess. It was also in happy unison with the Hellene's clear mental vision, his love of definite- ness, and his aversion to whatever was unlimited or vague. All of which is exemplified in Greek poetry. Its contents are clear and proportioned, unfailing in artistic unity. Its structure consists of metre, to wit, ordered measure, the ordering of what has definite quantitative proportion. The contents and form of Greek poetry were closely united. Pindar, creating an epinician ode, composed metre, music, and words. The simpler lyric metres — sapphics, alcaics, iambics — were more fixed ; and yet they had been created in correspondence with the nature of verses which express the writer^s circum- stances and his hates and loves. This was personal 235