By this time you should have seen, rather than any picture of
Greece and Athens in their heyday, an indication of certain
universal historical laws. As thus (to go back a little): an
influx of the Spirit is approaching, and a cycle of high
activities is about to begin. A great war has cleared off what
karmic weight has been hanging over Athens;--Xerxes, you will
remember, burnt the town. Hence there is a clearness in the inner
atmosphere; through which a great spiritual voice may, and does,
speak a great spiritual message. But human activities proceed,
ever increasing their momentum, until the atmosphere is no longer
clear, but heavy with the effluvia of by no means righteous
thought and action. The Spirit is no more visibly present, but
must manifest if at all through a thicker medium; and who speaks
now, speaks as artist only,--not as poet--or artist-prophet. Time
goes on, and the inner air grows still thicker; till men live in
a cloud, through which truths are hardly to be seen. Then those
who search for the light are apt to cry out in despair; they
become realists struggling to break the terrible molds of
thought:--and if you can hear the Spiritual in them at all, it is
not in a positive message they have for men, but in the greatness
of their heart and compassion. They do not build; they seek only
to destroy. There seems nothing else for them to do.

So in England, Wordsworth opened this last cycle of poetry;
coming when there was a clear atmosphere, and speaking more or
less clearly through it his message from the Gods. You hear a
like radiant note of hope in Shelley; and something of it in
Keats, who stood on the line that divides the Poet-Prophet from
the Poet-Artist. Then you come to the ascendency of Tennyson,
whose business in life was to be the latter. He tried the role of