Of human passions, but of love deflowered
His wisdom was not, for he knew thee well.
Thence came the honeyed corner at his lips.” ...
Love of earth meant breadth, perspective, and proportion, and therefore humour,—
“Thunders of laughter, clearing air and heart.”
His Melampus, servant of Apollo, had a medicine, a “juice of the woods,” which reclaimed men,—
“That frenzied in some delirious rage
Outran the measure.” ...
So, in “The Appeasement of Demeter,” it was on being made to laugh that the goddess relented from her devastating sorrow, and the earth could revive and flourish again. The poet’s kinship with earth taught him to look at lesser passing things with a smile, yet without disdain; and he saw the stars as no “distant aliens” or “senseless powers,” but as having in them the same fire as we ourselves, and could, nevertheless, turn from them to sing “A Stave of Roving Tim:—”