Heart of Man
Woodberry, George Edward, 1855-1930
English
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HEART OF MAN
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
COPYRIGHT 1899,BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.1899"Deep in the general heart of man"—WORDSWORTH
To the Memory of
EUGENE MONTGOMERYDEAR WAS HIS PRAISE, AND PLEASANT 'TWERE TO ME,
ON WHOSE FAR GRAVE TO-NIGHT THE DEEP SNOWS DRIFT;
IT NEEDS NOT NOW; TOGETHER WE SHALL SEE
HOW HIGH CHRIST'S LILIES O'ER MAN'S LAURELSLIFTMY FRIENDFebruary 18, 1899.
PREFACE
Of the papers contained in this volume "Taormina" was publishedin the Century Magazine; the others are new. The intentionof the author was to illustrate how poetry, politics, and religionare the flowering of the same human spirit, and have their feedingroots in a common soil, "deep in the general heart of men."
COLUMBIA COLLEGE,
February 22, 1809.
CONTENTS
TAORMINA
A NEW DEFENCE OF POETRY
DEMOCRACY
THE RIDE
TAORMINA
I
What should there be in the glimmering lights of a poorfishing-village to fascinate me? Far below, a mile perhaps, Ibehold them in the darkness and the storm like some phosphorescenceof the beach; I see the pale tossing of the surf beside them; Ihear the continuous roar borne up and softened about these heights;and this is night at Taormina. There is a weirdness in thescene—the feeling without the reality of mystery; and atevening, I know not why, I cannot sleep without stepping upon theterrace or peering through the panes to see those lights. Atmorning the charm has flown from the shore to the further heightsabove me. I glance at the vast banks of southward-lying cloud thatenvelop Etna, like deep fog upon the ocean; and then, inevitably,my eyes seek the double summit of the Taorminian mountain, risingnigh at hand a thousand feet, almost sheer, less than half a milewestward. The nearer height, precipice-faced, towers full in frontwith its crowning ruined citadel, and discloses, just below thepeak, on an arm of rock toward its right, a hermitage church amongthe heavily hanging mists. The other horn of the massive hill,somewhat more remote, behind and to the old castle's left, exposeson its slightly loftier crest the edge of a hamlet. It, too, iscloud-wreathed—the lonely crag of Mola. Over these hilltops,I know, mists will drift and touch all day; and often they darkenthreateningly, and creep softly down the slopes, and fill thenext-lying valley, and roll, and lift again, and reveal the flankof Monte d'Oro northward on the far-reaching range. As I waswalking the other day, with one of these floating showers gentlyblowing in my face down this defile, I noticed, where the mistshung in fragments from the cloud out over the gulf, how likeair-shattered arches they groined the profound ravine; and thinkinghow much of the romantic charm which delights lovers of themountains and the sea springs from such Gothic moods of nature, Ifelt for a moment something of the pleasure of recognition inmeeting with this northern and familiar element in the Sicilianlandscape.
One who has grown to be at home with nature cannot be quite astranger anywhere on earth. In new lands I find the poet's olddomain. It is not only from the land-side that these intimations ofold acquaintance come. When my eyes leave, as they will, the neargirdle of rainy mountain tops, and range home at last upon the sea,something familiar is there too,—that which I have alwaysknown,—but marvellously transformed and heightened in beauty
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