men. Everywhere there is an impression of surprise, as of people
first waking from the golden age, at fire, snow, wine, the touch of
water as one swims, the salt taste of the sea. And this simplicity
at first hand is a strange contrast to the sought-out simplicity of
Wordsworth. Desire here is towards the body of nature for its own
sake, not because a soul is divined through it.

And yet it is one of the charming anachronisms of a poet, who, while
he handles an ancient subject, never becomes an antiquarian, but
animates his [223] subject by keeping it always close to himself,
that betweenwhiles we have a sense of English scenery as from an eye
well practised under Wordsworth's influence, as from "the casement
half opened on summer-nights," with the song of the brown bird among
the willows, the

"Noise of bells, such as in moonlit lanes
Rings from the grey team on the market night."

Nowhere but in England is there such a "paradise of birds," the fern-
owl, the water-hen, the thrush in a hundred sweet variations, the
ger-falcon, the kestrel, the starling, the pea-fowl; birds heard from
the field by the townsman down in the streets at dawn; doves
everywhere, pink-footed, grey-winged, flitting about the temple,
troubled by the temple incense, trapped in the snow. The sea-touches
are not less sharp and firm, surest of effect in places where river
and sea, salt and fresh waves, conflict.

In handling a subject of Greek legend, anything in the way of an
actual revival must always be impossible. Such vain antiquarianism
in a waste of the poet's power. The composite experience of all the