Goethe, who saw so many things with such clearness of vision,
brought out the charm of the popular ballad for readers of a later
day in his remark that the value of these songs of the people is to
be found in the fact that their motives are drawn directly from
nature; and he added, that in the art of saying things compactly,
uneducated men have greater skill than those who are educated. It is
certainly true that no kind of verse is so completely out of the
atmosphere of modern writing as the popular ballad. No other form of
verse has, therefore, in so great a degree, the charm of freshness.
In material, treatment, and spirit, these bat lads are set in sharp
contrast with the poetry of the hour. They deal with historical
events or incidents, with local traditions, with personal adventure
or achievement. They are, almost without exception, entirely
objective. Contemporary poetry is, on the other hand, very largely
subjective; and even when it deals with events or incidents it
invests them to such a degree with personal emotion and imagination,
it so modifies and colours them with temperamental effects, that the
resulting poem is much more a study of subjective conditions than a
picture or drama of objective realities. This projection of the
inward upon the outward world, in such a degree that the dividing
line between the two is lost, is strikingly illustrated in
Maeterlinck's plays. Nothing could be in sharper contrast, for
instance, than the famous ballad of "The Hunting of the Cheviot" and
Maeterlinck's "Princess Maleine." There is no atmosphere, in a
strict use of the word, in the spirited and compact account of the
famous contention between the Percies and the Douglases, of which
Sir Philip Sidney said "that I found not my heart moved more than