Williston graphic. (Williston, Williams County, N.D.) 1895-1919, 1902-03-20
/ Our. Poetical
Legacy
BY
PROF. EDWARD DOWDEN. MA. LID.
Dean Of st. Patrick's College, Dublin.
Dean Of St. Patrick's College, Dublin.

visible and tangbehese unsaped poetry 20
chosen inheriors Of the which young hundred
ago WHAT THEY RECEIVED AS A MIST WAS TRANS
FORMED INTO A STREAM, AND THE STREAM BROAD
ENED TO A SWIFT AND ASTOUNDING RIVER.
The term Romantic Revival is somewhat misleading or at
BEST indicates only part of the fact There had Deen IN inc
eighteenth century naurac OF which Fielding IN
prose- earlier date and Cabbe at later date may
stand representatives Wordsworth also naturalist he
studied the OF the external world and the lives his
fellows IN the spirit OF researc but the naturalist was al
the time deal he recognized what spiritual part
and the part the For him the invisible flowed
in through the visible hence may sometimes
he the least Of poets and he who interpreted most
profoundly the revolutionary principle Of equality for the
crna distinctions Of high and low of great and SMALL disappear
spiritual light What he attained without effort he held in calm
and ndeteasibe His poetry in the ruest
Propeng but the prophet does rend his his mood
of serenity enclosing Of JOY which has all the quicker
ing power OF passion without its trouble its vcssitude.
The romantic revival might have lost itself in extravaganza
ngsed the debility hectic disease had entered into
alliance with the historical spirit and gained vigor and sanity from
that alliance In Cde Harold the awakened interest in the life
Of the inspiring influence in "Roderck the Last of the
Goth chapter OF Spanish history lifted from prose narrative
of dignity but Scott above all Others who effected
the union of the romantic and the historical Imagination His
ssctaon of the wholly from doctrinare theory from
the pald mist OF sentiment from curioes aesthetics from
pseudomedieva relgosty; HIS SYMPATHY WAS WITH AC-
TON, AND THE PASSIONS WHICH ENGENDER ACTION;
ne lived strenuous in the and therefore the for him
was reality and not dream.
The eighteenth had only turned with reverted
in its great historical school, of which Gbbon the and
its Ossanc Scandinavian and ballad evv the forgotten
ages and primitive cvzaons leaned forward and gazed
with wdyed hopes the future But the bright dawn of the
French Revolution had been followed by the Terror and last lib
and equality realized in the form of military depotis
and fraternity in that of the deadly strife of nations
The boundless DESIRES the aspirations excited
uonary lived in the spirit of Byron but he around
him world of ruins ruined faiths ruined hopes and in England
the gathering forces OF reaction Byron sang generously
dom but for him freedom little than the casting away
by nations by the individual thought hardly
all of the freedom obedience higher law. energy,
commanding egoism dpoyd amid fallen ideals and dscred
tied creeds and the end cynsm redeemed from
the bitterness of its gayety cysm for which the partly
responsible and partly the When Byron died the
great power lost the world upon contemporaries
the npressve because the single
mind single will and did not live inspiring influence
mper wisdom and of love.