But the Nature and
Universe revealed by modern Christian science are too vast and profound
to mirror anything short of the image of the Omnipotent himself.
Still there is a period in the life of every imaginative youth, when he
is a pagan and worships in the old Homeric pantheon,--where self-denial
and penance were unknown, and where in grove and glen favored mortal
lover might hear the tread of "Aphrodite's glowing sandal." The
youthful poet may exclaim with Schiller,--
"Art thou, fair world, no more?
Return, thou virgin-bloom on Nature's face!
Ah, only on the minstrel's magic shore
Can we the footstep of sweet Fable trace!
The meadows mourn for the old hallowing life;
Vainly we search the earth of gods bereft;
Where once the warm and living shapes were rife,
Shadows alone are left!
Cold, from the North, has gone
Over the flowers the blast that chilled their May;
And, to enrich the worship of the One,
A universe of gods must pass away!
Mourning, I search on yonder starry steeps,
But thee, no more, Selene, there I see!
And through the woods I call, and o'er the deeps,
And--Echo answers me." [Bulwer's Translation.]
The Elysian beauty and melancholy grace which Wordsworth throws over
the shade of Alcestis were gleams borrowed from a better world than the
mythic Elysium.
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