"
Nowhere but in England is there such a "paradise of birds," the fern-
owl, the water-hen, the thrush in a hundred sweet variations, the
ger-falcon, the kestrel, the starling, the pea-fowl; birds heard from
the field by the townsman down in the streets at dawn; doves
everywhere, pink-footed, grey-winged, flitting about the temple,
troubled by the temple incense, trapped in the snow. The sea-touches
are not less sharp and firm, surest of effect in places where river
and sea, salt and fresh waves, conflict.
In handling a subject of Greek legend, anything in the way of an
actual revival must always be impossible. Such vain antiquarianism
in a waste of the poet's power. The composite experience of all the
ages is part of each one of us: to deduct from that experience, to
obliterate any part of it, to come face to face with the people of a
past age, as if the Middle Age, the Renaissance, the eighteenth
century had not been, is as impossible as to become a little [224]
child, or enter again into the womb and be born. But though it is
not possible to repress a single phase of that humanity, which,
because we live and move and have our being in the life of humanity,
makes us what we are, it is possible to isolate such a phase, to
throw it into relief, to be divided against ourselves in zeal for it;
as we may hark back to some choice space of our own individual life.
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