Calliope's call is not yet closed, nor are the epics of Asia ended;
the Sphinx is not yet silent, nor the fountain of Castaly dry. For
art is very life itself and knows nothing of death; she is absolute
truth and takes no care of fact; she sees (as I remember Mr.
Swinburne insisting on at dinner) that Achilles is even now more
actual and real than Wellington, not merely more noble and
interesting as a type and figure but more positive and real.
Literature must rest always on a principle, and temporal
considerations are no principle at all. For to the poet all times
and places are one; the stuff he deals with is eternal and
eternally the same: no theme is inept, no past or present
preferable. The steam whistle will not affright him nor the flutes
of Arcadia weary him: for him there is but one time, the artistic
moment; but one law, the law of form; but one land, the land of
Beauty - a land removed indeed from the real world and yet more
sensuous because more enduring; calm, yet with that calm which
dwells in the faces of the Greek statues, the calm which comes not
from the rejection but from the absorption of passion, the calm
which despair and sorrow cannot disturb but intensify only.
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