ways a more real thing. But that the Hellenic prime with all its exquisite sensibility was deficient in recognition of a high ideal of duty can never be believed among those who have studied it candidly and attentively; I have endeavoured above to suggest that in this point, take it all in all, it yields to no age or race. It would indeed be a mistaken following of those noble servants of Humanity to draw from their memories an argument for selfish isolation or for despair of the great human republic. He who has drunk deeply of that divine well and gazed long at the fair vision of what then was, will, if his nature be capable of true sympathy with the various elements of that wonderful age, turn again without bitterness to the confused modern world, saddened but not paralysed by the comparison, grieving, but with no querulous grief, for the certainty that those days are done.
Ay, let our fates be such, for such they are;
So ordereth the voice oracular
Of the slow-moving, ever-moving years,
Too stern, too hind, to stay them for our fears;
And our own breasts, that know a younger age
Our creditor for ampler heritage.
Yet whoso anywhiles hath lingered long
In that high realm of unforgotten song,
This man methinks shall never quite set free
His soul from that constraining phantasy;
Still sometimes in a lonely place and fair,
Where the warm south-winds stir the rainy air
And sigh themselves to silence, shall his ear
In that vague wistful sighing seem to hear
From dreamy regions of the elder earth
A mournful music sweeter than our mirth,
Some harping of the god of golden head
By Delian waters waiting to be dead,
Some voice of wailing wood-nymphs amorous
Far off, within a Vale[errata 1] of Maenalus.
