unconscious record of many minds.... Thus sprung from a wondrous life,
hymns lead a life yet more wonderful. When they first come to us they
are like the single strokes of a bell ringing down to us from above;
but, at length, a single hymn becomes a whole chime of bells, mingling
and discoursing to us the harmonies of a life's Christian experience."

Passing from this very human and sympathetic view of the profoundest
use of poetry, note how the veteran Bryant confirms it. In treating of
the beautiful mythologies of Greece and Rome, so much of which entered
into the warp and woof of ancient poetry, he grants their poetical
quality, but doubts whether, on the whole, the art gained more than
it lost by them, because, having a god for every operation of
nature, they left nothing in obscurity; everything was accounted for;
mystery--a prime element of poetry--existed no longer. Moreover:

"That system gave us the story of a superior and celestial race of
beings, to whom human passions were attributed, and who were, like
ourselves, susceptible of suffering; but it elevated them so far above
the creatures of earth in power, in knowledge, and in security from
the calamities of our condition, that they could be the subjects of
little sympathy. Therefore it is that the mythological poetry of
the ancients is as cold as it is beautiful, as unaffecting as it is
faultless....

"The admirers of poetry, then, may give up the ancient mythology
without a sigh. Its departure has left us what is better than all
it has taken away: it has left us men and women; it has left us the
creatures and things of God's universe, to the simple charm of which
the cold splendor of that system blinded men's eyes, and to the
magnificence of which the rapid progress of science is every day