flowers of the actual season. The poetry of mere literature, like
the dead body, could not bleed, while there was a heart, a poetic
heart, in the living world, which beat, bled, spoke with irresistible
power. Elderly [53] people, Virgil in hand, might assert
professionally that the contemporary age, an age, of course, of
little people and things, deteriorate since the days of their own
youth, must necessarily be unfit for poetic uses. But then youth,
too, had its perpetual part to play, protesting that, after all said,
the sun in the air, and in its own veins, was still found to be hot,
still begetting, upon both alike, flowers and fruit; nay! visibly new
flowers, and fruit richer than ever. Privately, in fact, Gaston had
conceived of a poetry more thaumaturgic than could be anything of
earlier standing than himself. The age renews itself; and in
immediate derivation from it a novel poetry also grows superb and
large, to fill a certain mental situation made ready in advance.
Yes! the acknowledged, and, so to call it, legitimate, poetry of
literature was but a thing he might sip at, like some sophisticated
rarity in the way of wine, for example, pleasing the acquired taste.
It was another sort of poetry, unexpressed, perhaps inexpressible,
certainly not hitherto made known in books, that must drink up and
absorb him, like the joyful air--him, and the earth, with its deeds,
its blossoms, and faces.

In such condition of mind, how deeply, delightfully, must the poetry
of Ronsard and his fellows have moved him, when he became aware, as
from age to age inquisitive youth by good luck does become aware, of
the literature of his own day, confirming--more than confirming--
[54] anticipation! Here was a poetry which boldly assumed the dress,
the words, the habits, the very trick, of contemporary life, and
turned them into gold. It took possession of the lily in one's hand,