. . .
"And so, as I said, there is to me an indescribable pathos in these
sombre pictures of Nature in our old Beowulf here, -- these drear marshes,
these monster-haunted meres, that boil with blood and foam with tempests,
these fast-rooted, joyless woods that overlean the waters,
these enormous, nameless beasts that lie along on promontories all day
and wreak vengeance on ships at night -- have you not seen them,
headlands running out into the sea like great beasts
with their forepaws extended? And is it not a huge Gothic picture of the wind
rushing down the windy nesse . . . in the evening, and whelming
the frail ships of the old Dane, the old Jute and Frisian and Saxon,
in the sea? All these, I say, are mere outcroppings of the rude war
which was not yet ended against Nature, traces of a time
when Nature was still a savage Mother of Grendel, tearing and devouring
the sons of men."*
--
* `Shakspere and His Forerunners', vol. i, p. 55.
--
Lanier believed strongly that the early English poems
ought to be taught in schools and colleges. The following passage
does not sound as revolutionary now as it did in 1879: --
"Surely it is time our popular culture were cited into
the presence of the Fathers. That we have forgotten their works
is in itself matter of mere impiety which many practical persons
would consider themselves entitled to dismiss as a purely sentimental crime;
but ignorance of their ways goes to the very root of growth.
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