first leaves.

From the poetry of Matthew Arnold it is possible to derive an art of
life which carries us back to the beginnings of the world's history.
He, the civilized Oxonian; he, domestic moralist; he, the airily
playful scholar, has yet the power of giving that _Epic solemnity_ to
our sleep and our waking; to our "going forth to our work arid our
labour until the evening"; to the passing of the seasons over us;
which is the ground and substance of all poetic imagination, and
which no change or progress, or discovery, can invade or spoil.

For it is the nature of poetry to heighten and to throw into relief
those eternal things in our common destiny which too soon get
overlaid--And some things only poetry can reach--Religion may
have small comfort for us when in the secret depths of our hearts we
endure a craving of which we may not speak, a sickening aching
longing for "the lips so sweetly forsworn." But poetry is waiting for
us, there also, with her Rosemary and her Rue. Not one human heart
but has its hidden shrine before which the professional ministrants
are fain to hold their peace. But even there, under the veiled Figure
itself, some poor poetic "Jongleur de Notre Dame" is permitted to
drop his monk's robe, and dance the dance that makes time and
space nothing!

SHELLEY

One of the reasons why we find it hard to read the great poets is that
they sadden us with their troubling beauty. Sadden us--and put us to
shame! They compel us to remember the days of our youth; and that
is more than most of us are able to bear! What memories! Ye gods,
what memories!

And this is true, above all, of Shelley. His verses, when we return to
them again, seem to have the very "perfume and suppliance" of the
Spring; of the Spring of our frost-bitten age. Their sweetness has a
poignancy and a pang; the sweetness of things too dear; of things
whose beauty brings aching and a sense of bitter loss. It is the
sudden uncovering of dead violets, with the memory of the soil they
were plucked from. It is the strain of music over wide waters--and
over wider years.

These verses always had something about them that went further
than their actual meaning. They were always a little like planetary
melodies, to which earthly words had been fitted. And now they
carry us, not only beyond words, but beyond thought,--"as doth
Eternity." There is, indeed, a sadness such as one cannot bear long
"and live" about Shelley's poetry.

It tr