contemporaries. He is their chief. He challenges other regions in the
hinterland of our souls. Yet how shall we describe the narrowness of the
line which divides his province from theirs, or the only half-conscious
subtlety of the gesture with which he beckons us aside from trodden and
familiar paths? The difference, the sense of departure, is perhaps most
apparent in this, that he knows his beauty is not beautiful, and his
home no home at all.

'This is my grief. That land,
My home, I have never seen.
No traveller tells of it,
However far he has been.

'And could I discover it
I fear my happiness there,
Or my pain, might be dreams of return
To the things that were.'

Great poetry stands in this, that it expresses man's allegiance to his
destiny. In every age the great poet triumphs in all that he knows of
necessity; thus he is the world made vocal. Other generations of men may
know more, but their increased knowledge will not diminish from the
magnificence of the music which he has made for the spheres. The known
truth alters from age to age; but the thrill of the recognition of the
truth stands fast for all our human eternity. Year by year the universe
grows vaster, and man, by virtue of the growing brightness of his little
lamp, sees himself more and more as a child born in the midst of a dark
forest, and finds himself less able to claim the obeisance of the all.
Yet if he would be a poet, and not a harper of threadbare tunes, he must
at each step in the downward passing from his sovereignty, recognise