"
It may be said that the poet is carried away by the feeling of the
moment. It finds expression, however, more calmly, though no
less decidedly, in a less well-known passage:
"O fancy, what an age was that for song!
That age, when not by laws inanimate,
As men believed, the waters were impelled,
The air controlled, the stars their courses held;
But element and orb on _acts_ did wait
Of Powers endued with visible form instinct,
With will, and to their work by passion linked."
Clearly mythology and nature-poetry are closely allied though
centuries come between: they breathe the same air though
"creeds outworn" have yielded place to deeper faiths. And we are
driven to ask--Is poetry in its turn to go?--poetry, at any rate,
of the old, simple, direct sort? Reflective reason is asserting
itself: critical methods play havoc with the spontaneous
creations of imagination. Coleridge, in one of his moods, would
almost persuade us so. In his "Piccolomini" Max is conversing
with the Countess:
"The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty and the majesty,
That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and wat'ry depths; all these have vanished;
They live no longer in the faith of reason."
And yet Coleridge did not allow that the outlook was wholly
sad. His young soldier continues:
"But still the heart doth need a language, still
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names.
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