The great Poets who are chiefly this, men capable of perfect expression (though of no more feeling than any other of their kind), are dignified by Song, much more than by any others of their forms of power. Consider that song of Du Bellay’s which he translated out of the Italian, and in which he has the winnower singing as he turns the winnowing fan. That is great expression, because no man can read it without feeling that if ever he had to do the hard work of winnowing this is the song he would like to sing.
Song also is the mistress of memory, and though a scent is more powerful, a song is more general, as an instrument for the resurrection of lost things. Thus exiles who of all men on earth suffer most deeply, most permanently, and most fruitfully, are great makers of songs. The chief character in songs—that almost any man can write them, that any man at all can sing them, and that the greatest are anonymous—is never better proved than in this quality of the songs of exiles. There is a Highland song of which I have been told, written in the Celtic dialect and translated again into English by I know not whom, which, for all its unknown authorship (and I believe its authorship to be unknown) enshrines that radiantly beautiful line:
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides.
The last anonymous piece of silver that was struck in the mint of the Roman language has that same poignant quality.
Exul quid vis canere?
All the songs that men make (and they are powerful ones) regretting youth are songs of exile, and in a sense (it is a high and true sense) the mighty hymns are songs of exile also.
Qui vitam sine termino
Nobis donet in patria,
that is the pure note of exile, and so is the
Coheredes et sodales