mere imitation, his Poetry turn to wailing and convulsions: but let
him once fall back to Nature--to the all-cherishing Earth, the Mother of
Beauty--and all his Works and Songs become as seas, rivers, green
leaves, and the music of birds.

We have too long needed the touch of fresh and holy Earth. Too long has
our love of picture and poem, and of all that the glorious impulse _to
create in beauty_ achieves, been fickle as the wind; based on discordant
fancies and distorted tradition. Symbolism in art, at present means only
an arbitrary and puerile substitution of one object or caprice for
another. The most successful poetic simile is often as thoroughly
conventional, and consequently as perishable, as possible. In short, we
are _not_ in an age when there is one poetry alike for _all_ men; when
the artist and bard are _truly_ great and honored, and their works
regarded as the Best that man can do. The few who comprehend this in all
its sad significance look from their towers tearfully forth into the
dark night, and wail, 'Great PAN is dead!'

But he is not dead, nor sleepeth. He will yet return in that awful dawn
of the day which will know no end. Already faint gleams of its glory
gild the steep hills, the high places, and the groves sacred of old to
the Starry Queen, and a reviving breath sweeps from the blue sea,
calling up in ruined fane, and on the green turf where once stood
temples in the olden time, fresh ideals of those forms of ineffable
beauty, faun and fay, born of the primeval myth. There is already a
quivering in the ancient graves, and strange lights flicker over the
mighty stones consecrated by tradition to incantations, not of morbid
fears, but of the strong and beautiful in nature. For in the
Utilitarianism, in the steam and machinery of 'this age without faith,'
I see the first necessary step of a return to real needs, solid facts,
and natural laws. It is the first part of the doing away with rococo
sentimentalisms, mediaeval tatters, and all wretched and ragged
remainders and reminders of states of society which have nothing in
common with our present needs. And it will be a revival, not of the
ancient adoration of Nature as a mythology and a superstition, but as a
heartfelt love of all that is beautiful, and joyous, and healthy in
itself. Then the gods will indeed return and live again among us; not as
literal beings, however, but as blessings in all that is best for man.
Nor will 'Romance' be wanti