Literature is the most enduring of the fine arts. No painter, sculptor, or architect has erected so permanent a memorial as the poets have done. Statues may be broken, pictures may fade or be consumed by fire, even the pyramids may crumble away, but the thought contained in great books such as the Iliad and the Aeneid is more nearly eternal than marble or bronze. Lowell’s Commemoration Ode forms a more durable monument to Harvard’s dead heroes than Memorial Hall. There have been other actions as fine as the charge of the Light Brigade, but it is only those that the great poets have sung that are truly immortal in our memories.
“For deeds doe die, however noblie donne,
And thoughts doe as themselves decay;
But wise words, taught in numbers for to runne,
Recorded by the Muses live for ay.”
—Spenser.
Among the most lasting works of men are mosaics; they are not easily broken, their colors do not fade and their outlines do not grow dim with time. In the museum of the Capitol at Rome is the famous mosaic of Pliny’s doves, rendered familiar by so many copies: three or four doves perched on a broad-brimmed cup, absolutely as perfect in form and tint as when Pliny saw them two thousand years ago. Yet these tiny bits of stone joined by cement are not as permanent as the poems of Homer which have as much human interest to-day as they had when Alexander read them in the intervals of his pursuit of the Persians.
The plays of Shakespeare will last as long as the earth remains, and he said,
“Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme.”