Had he gone
working around the edges, following the occasional _detours_ and
slips of consciousness, there would have been no "Iliad" or "Odyssey"
for mankind to love and for Pope to spoil. The great poets tell us
nothing new. They remind us. They bear speech deep into our being, and
to the heart of our heart lend a tongue. They have words that
correspond to facts in all men and women. But they are not newsmongers.
Yesterday, I read in a prose translation of the "Odyssey" the exquisite
idyl of Nausicaa and her Maids, and the discovery of himself by
Ulysses. Perhaps the picture came out more clearly than ever before; at
any rate, it filled my whole day with delight, and to-day I seem to
have heard some sweetest good tidings, as if word had come from an old
playmate, dear and distant in memory, or a happy and wealthy letter had
arrived from a noble friend. Whence this enrichment? There was nothing
in this idyl, to which, even on a first reading, I could give the name
of "new truth." The secret is, that I _have_ indeed had tidings of
old playmates, dear and distant in memory,--of those bright-eyed,
brave, imaging playmates of all later ages, the inhabitants of Homer's
world. And little can one care for novelties of thought, in comparison
with these tones from the deeps of undying youth.
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