The Washington herald., 1910-10-09
THE TRUE ROMANCE.
Romance!

THE TRUE ROMANCE.
Romance.
Thy face is far from this orr war.
Our call and counter cry;
shall Hot find Thee quick and kind.
Nor know Thee till l die
Enough for in dreams to see
And touch Thy garments hem:
Thy feet have trod 50 near to God
7 nav not follow them.
So sang Kipling. bewailing the loss OF
the spirit Of true romance In the world.
and the tendency in many materlalistic
minds in these days is 10 believe that ro-
nance has died away; as II life we're all
dry-as-dust, matter-of-fact. mere money
making and dun thrift and care-measured
only by the mete OF common sense. Thank
God. it is not really so. Faith and high
hopes. at least. do thus much for a man
they teach him that boyish optimism
which keeps certain measure Of youth
in the spirit and allows the Imagination
to have swing about the world.
Romance viii never die so long as
men hold passions in their hearts. and
these shall never fail MS. Outlines IN
deed, these passions and capacities may
work to our hurt, but much more often
10 our good. As Amiel says;
Not heart but has its romance: not
life which does not hide its secret
which is either its thorn or its spur
Everywhere grief hope comedy. tragedy.
even under the petrifactlon of old age
a. IN the twisted forms of fossils We
may discover the agitation and the tor
lures Of youth"
The man who declares that there is
no true romance to-day, who looks back
10 the stories he read when he was a
boy. and thinks only of romance as a
iairy tale belonging TO that elder dav
does not really understand the meaning
Of the word does not realize what ro-
nance really is. AS a matter Of fact
there are few words in the English Ian
guage that have been so abused and
kicked about. As Stowe says:
Lei US look up in fear and reverence and
say. God is the great maker OF romance.
He from whose hand came man and
woman; He. who strung the great harm
OF existence. with all it's wild and won
derful and manifold chords and attuned
them to one another; He Is the great
Poet Of Life"
You have only to look about you with
clear eyes and heart willing 10 accent
the facts of life TO realize that the
present-day life Is full of the true ro-
nance, It IS BY no means wholly prosaic
precise, tame. or finite To the eyes Of
faith and hope and confidence the life OF
to-day abounds in poetry Now. as ever
since the world began, we may see men
and women moved-and nations. toby
the working Of mighty passions. which
seem TO arm the soul with almost super
human energy
we may see romance in the bloom and
buoyancy Of youth: In the throbblne Of
the hearts that awaken at the first ten
der touch OF love. in the dreams Of
happiness that seems TOO vast for this
earth-these things. which make up the
sum and total Of our everyday life. are
real poetry. wrie In red human blood
the very spirit and body Of romance,
George Eliot answered the objections
OF one who thought that romance was
dying out, by saying:
Perhaps poetry and romance are as
plentiful as ever in the world. except for
those phlegmatic natures who would In
any age, have regarded them as a dull
form or erroneous thinking. They exist
very easily in the same room with the
mlscroscope, and even in railway car
riages what banishes them is the
vacuum In the gentleman and lady mas
sengers."
She made the point that even science,
with its cold materialsm. is not strong
enough TO rob US of romance. Steven
son has the same thought:
Science writes OF the world as If with
the cold finger OF a starfish. II is ali
true, but what is 1t when compared 10
the reality Of which 1t discourses, where
hearts beat high in April. and death
strikes, and hills totter in the earth
quake, and there is a glamour over all
the objects of sight. and a thrill in all
noises for the ear and Romance herself
has made her dwelling among men? So
we come back to the old myth and hear
the goat-footed piper making the music
which Is itself the charm and the terror
OF things and when a glen Invites our
visiting footsteps. fancy that Pan leads
Us there with d gracious tremolo. or
when our hearts quail at the thunder of
the cataract. tell ourselves that he has
stamped his hoof in the nigh ticket"
The sensibility of the heart which al
lows us 10 acknowledge the power of ro-
nance Is one of the most necessary
traits to be cultivated by the man who
seeks true happiness. II is through ro-
nance and a belief in romance that We
may find ourselves getting away from
the worries and petty cares which tend
so often to make US think OF the world
as a rather tawdry and sordid theater.
in which we play our petty parts 1t
will help as-to--s see cur lives through