an interlude study which shall look back to the step we have just
taken, and forward to the one we are about to take, let us test our
growth in _vitality in thinking_ and our need of _intelligence in
feeling_, by voicing the following selections from didactic poetry. This
form affords the best exercise in both activities because it makes a
double appeal, and so a double demand upon the interpreter--an appeal
through form to emotion, through aim to intelligence, and through
message and atmosphere to both. I have chosen examples of this form in
which the beauty and fascination of meter, rhythm, and rhyme, and the
didactic nature of the thought do not seem to overbalance each other. If
either should predominate you must, by your interpretation, strike the
balance. In reading Robert Browning's _Rabbi Ben Ezra_ (from which I
shall quote but a few verses) you must carry to your auditor the full
import of the philosophy, but in doing so you must not lose the beauty
of the verse in which the poet has set it.

RABBI BEN EZRA

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith, "A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

Not that, amassing flowers,
Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours,
Which lily leave and then as best recall?"
Not that, admiring stars,
It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars;
Mine be some figured flame which blends, transcends them all!"

Not for such hopes and fears
Annulling youth's brief years,
Do I remonstrate: folly wide the mark!
Rather I prize the doubt
Low kinds exist without,
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a spark.

* * * * *

Then, welcome each rebuff
That turns earth's smoothness rough,
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go!
Be our joys three-parts pain!
Strive and hold cheap the strain,
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe!

For thence--a paradox
Which comforts while it mocks--
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.

* * * * *

Now, who shall arbitrate?
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, sl