you will, they are ever fresh as though new minted from the brain of the
poet. Being perfect, they can never droop under that satiety which
arises from the perception of fault; their virtue can never be so
entirely savoured as to leave no pungency of gusto for the next approach.

Among the many reasons which make me glad to have been born in England,
one of the first is that I read Shakespeare in my mother tongue. If I
try to imagine myself as one who cannot know him face to face, who hears
him only speaking from afar, and that in accents which only through the
labouring intelligence can touch the living soul, there comes upon me a
sense of chill discouragement, of dreary deprivation. I am wont to think
that I can read Homer, and, assuredly, if any man enjoys him, it is I;
but can I for a moment dream that Homer yields me all his music, that his
word is to me as to him who walked by the Hellenic shore when Hellas
lived? I know that there reaches me across the vast of time no more than
a faint and broken echo; I know that it would be fainter still, but for
its blending with those memories of youth which are as a glimmer of the
world's primeval glory. Let every land have joy of its poet; for the
poet is the land itself, all its greatness and its sweetness, all that
incommunicable heritage for which men live and die. As I close the book,
love and reverence possess me. Whether does my full heart turn to the
great Enchanter, or to the Island upon which he has laid his spell? I
know not. I cannot think of them apart. In the love and reverence
awakened by that voice of voices, Shakespeare and England are but one.




AUTUMN