even the footstep of the woman beloved have come to
possess for the lover a significance as great as life and death. For the
moment he knows no other divinity; she is his god, in the sense that her
power over him has become infinite and irresistible.

The second example may be furnished from another part of the same
composition--the little song of exaltation after the promise to marry has
been given.

O let the solid ground
Not fail beneath my feet
Before my life has found
What some have found so sweet;
Then let come what come may,
What matter if I go mad,
I shall have had my day.

Let the sweet heavens endure,
Not close and darken above me
Before I am quite, quite sure
That there is one to love me;
Then let come what come may
To a life that has been so sad,
I shall have had my day.

The feeling of the lover is that no matter what happens afterwards, the
winning of the woman is enough to pay for life, death, pain, or anything
else. One of the most remarkable phenomena of the illusion is the supreme
indifference to consequences--at least to any consequences which would not
signify moral shame or loss of honour, Of course the poet is supposed to
consider the emotion only in generous natures. But the subject of this
splendid indifference has been more wonderfully treated by Victor Hugo
than by Tennyson--as we shall see later on, when considering another phase
of the emotion. Before doing that, I want to call your attention to a very
charming treatment of love's romance by an American. It is one of the most
delicate of modern compositions, and it is likely to become a classic, as
it has already been printed in four or five different anthologies. The
title is "Atalanta's Race."

First let me tell you the story of Atalanta, so that you will be better
able to see the fine symbolism of the poem. Atalanta, the daughter of a
Greek king, was not only the most beautiful of maidens, but the swiftest
runner in the world. She passed her time in hunting, and did not wish to
marry. But as many men wanted to marry her, a law was passed that any one
who desired to win her must run a race with her. If he could beat her in
running, then she promised to marry him, but if he lost the race, he was
to be killed. Some say that the man was allowed to run first, and that the
girl followed with a spear in her hand and killed him when she overtook
him. There are different accounts of the contest. Many