schoolhouse
dormitory. They were mine, though: but I dreamed them awake. I awoke
before they began, always, and used to sit up trembling and wait for
them.

An apologue, if you please. On the sacred road from Athens to Eleusis,
about midway of its course, and just beyond the pass, there is a fork
in it, and a stony path branches off and leads up into the hills.
There, in the rock, is a shallow cave, and before that, where once was
an altar of Aphrodite, the ruins of her shrine and precinct may be
seen. As I was going to Eleusis the other day, I stopped the carriage
to visit the place. Now, beside the cave is a niche, cut square in the
face of the rock, for offerings; and in that niche I found a fresh
bunch of field flowers, put there by I know not what dusty-foot
wayfarer. That was no longer ago than last May, and the man who did
the piety was a Christian, I suppose. So do I avow myself, without
derogation, I hope, to the profession; for no more than Mr. Robert
Kirk, a minister of religion in Scotland in the seventeenth century,
do I consider that a knowledge of the Gods is incompatible with belief
in God. There is a fine distinction for you: I believe that God
exists; I infer him by reason stimulated by desire. But I know that
the Gods exist by other means than those. If I could be as sure of God
as I am of the Gods, I might perhaps be a better Christian, but I
should not believe any less in the Gods.

* * * * *

I found religion through Homer: I found poetry through Milton, whose
_Comus_ we had to read for examination by some learned Board. If any
one thing definitely committed me to poesy it was that poem; and as
has nearly always happened to me, the crisis of discovery came in a
flash. We were all there ranked at our inky desks on some drowsy
afternoon. The books lay open before us, the lesson, I suppose,
prepared. But what followed had not been prepared--that some one began
to read:

"The star that bids the shepherd fold
Now the top of Heav'n doth hold;
And the gilded car of day
His glowing axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantic stream"--

and immediately, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, it was
changed--for me--from verse to poetry; that is, from a jingle to a
significant fact. It was more than it appeared; it was transfigured;
its implication was manifest. That's all I can say--except this, that,
untried as I was, I jumped into the poetic skin of