by becoming Laurels and Reeds and Daffodils and sturdy Oaks, and how
human nature was thus diffused through all created things and was
epigrammatically expressed in them.

"And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
Made up a meditative joy, and found
Religious meanings in the forms of Nature."

Like Faustus, he was permitted to look into her deep bosom, as into the
bosom of a friend,--to find his brothers in the still wood, in the air,
and in the water,--to see himself and the mysterious wonders of his own
breast in the movements of the elements. And so he took Nature as a
figurative exponent of humanity, and extracted the symbolic truths from
her productions, and used them nobly in his Art.

Garbett, an English aesthetical writer, assures us that the _Anthemion_
bears not the slightest resemblance to the Honeysuckle or any other
plant, "being no representation of anything in Nature, but simply the
necessary result of the complete and systematic attempt to combine unity
and variety by the principle of _gradation_." But here he speaks like a
geometer, and not like an artist. He seeks rather for the resemblance of
form than the resemblance of spirit, and, failing to realize the object
of his search, he endeavors to find a cause for this exquisite effect
in pure reason. With equal perversity, Poe endeavored to persuade the
public that his "Raven" was the result of mere aesthetical deductions!

And here the old burden of our song must once again be heard: If we
would know the golden secret of the Greek Ideal, we must ourselves
first learn how to _love_ with the wisdom and chastity of old Hellenic
passion. We must sacrifice Taste and Fancy and Prejudice, whose specious