Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/242

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pleasure, its estimate of failure and success; none of more noble sadness; no poem working more indomitably for spiritual illumination. Shall we rule The Grecian sages.out the elegies of Theognis or the mystic speculations of Empedocles, celebrant of the golden age and declarer of the unapproachable God? And who would lay rude hands upon the poet who concerned himself with the universe, surpassing all other Latins in intellectual passion and dignity of theme? The rugged "De Rerum Natura" of Lucretius seems to me as much greater Lucretius.than the Æneids as fate and nature are greater than the world known in that day. Whether his science was false or true,—and meanwhile you know that the atomic theory is once more in vogue,—he essayed "no middle flight," but soared upon the philosophy of Epicurus to proclaim the very nature of things; meditating which, as he declared, the terrors of the mind were dispelled, the walls of the world parted asunder, and he saw things "in operation throughout the whole void." What shall Omar.we do with Omar Khayyám, at least with that unique paraphrase of his "Rubáiyát" which has impressed the rarest spirits of our day, and has so inspired the wondrous pencil of Elihu Vedder, our The wise imagination of our recent time.American Blake? And what of "In Memoriam"? The flower of Tennyson's prime is distinctly also the representative Victorian poem. It transmits the most characteristic religious thought of our intellectual leaders at