ts, with local traditions, with personal adventure
or achievement. They are, almost without exception, entirely
objective. Contemporary poetry is, on the other hand, very largely
subjective; and even when it deals with events or incidents it
invests them to such a degree with personal emotion and imagination,
it so modifies and colours them with temperamental effects, that the
resulting poem is much more a study of subjective conditions than a
picture or drama of objective realities. This projection of the
inward upon the outward world, in such a degree that the dividing
line between the two is lost, is strikingly illustrated in
Maeterlinck's plays. Nothing could be in sharper contrast, for
instance, than the famous ballad of "The Hunting of the Cheviot" and
Maeterlinck's "Princess Maleine." There is no atmosphere, in a
strict use of the word, in the spirited and compact account of the
famous contention between the Percies and the Douglases, of which
Sir Philip Sidney said "that I found not my heart moved more than
with a Trumpet." It is a breathless, rushing narrative of a swift
succession of events, told with the most straight-forward
simplicity. In the "Princess Maleine," on the other hand, the
narrative is so charged with subjective feeling, the world in which
the action takes place is so deeply tinged with lights that never
rested on any actual landscape, that all sense of reality is lost.
The play depends for its effect mainly upon atmosphere. Certain
very definite impressions are produced with singular power, but
there is no clear, clean stamping of occurrences on the mind. The
imagination is skilfully awakened and made to do the work of
observation.

The note of the popular ballad is its objectivity; it not only takes
us out of doors, but it also takes us out of the individual
consciousness. The manner is entirely subordinated to the matter; the
poet, if there was a poet in the case, obliterates himself. What we
get is a definite report of events which have taken place, not a
study of a man's mind nor an account of a man's feelings. The true
balladist is never introspective; he is concerned not with himself
but with his story. There is no self-disclosure in his song. To the
mood of Senancour and Amiel he was a stranger. Neither he nor the
men to whom he recited or sang would have understood that mood.
They were primarily and unreflectively absorbed in the world outside
of themselves. They saw f