THE RANDALL FAMILY 1 43
As Art by light and heat maintains
Its triumph o'er decay, And Summer's fragrant bloom detains,
When she hath passed away:
So in old age may we our youth
Prolong with kindly skill, Lend warmth to love and light to truth,
Shall keep Life blooming still.
Who doth not scent the new-mown hay,
Though on another's ground? What though we give our flowers away?
They still shed sweetness round.
We, too, their bloom, their fragrance share,
Though for another strown. And, while we soothe another's care,
We lull to sleep our own.*
��Our winter has been very damp and open, and has pro- duced much illness. I, too, have been unfit this winter for other work than reading, and after suffering for a long time with a violent cough have been obliged to wear flan- nels, as creating an irritation less dangerous. This has cured me. You would not know my old library room at present, it has grown so cosy. A change of place in sev-
- The subjective aspect of the truth presented in this lovely poem is, of course, typically
modern; while the objective aspect is exhibited in Greek tragedy, with its harrowing delinea- tion of the woes that proceed, not from "the colors of the mind," but from Fate, regnant above both men and gods. This momentary separation of aspects is necessitated by the nature of Art, which, in poetry scarcely less than in painting or sculpture, can exhibit only a single aspect at a time to the imagination; it is reserved for Philosophy to unite both aspects com- pletely in the synthesis of reason. That Randall was fully alive to the charm of the classi- cal spirit, and by no means blind to the objective aspect of the truth, appears plainly enough in the "Lament of Orpheus" and the "Dream of Orestes;" while both aspects receive, perhaps, their highest practicable combination in the "Spring Morning of a Bereaved Man." The above lyric is repeated among the " Miscellaneous Poems"; but I leave it here, also, imbedded in a private letter, as one might leave a spray of the Epig-cea repens to live its little life unmolested amon^ the dead leaves of its native woods.
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