“The lord of life and poesy and light:”
His sister was the goddess of the earth’s satellite—
“Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns,
To whose bright image nightly by the moon,
Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs.”
They heard gods in winds and in fire—and altars to these were among the earliest raised. They saw a terrible divinity in the vastness or angry billows of the sea, and imagined a crowd of lesser beings to haunt its caverns and depths. The forests were sacred to the universal Pan—his fauns, sylvans and satyrs; every oak had its hamadryad, every river its naiad or potamid; the oreads took charge of the flowery meadows, and the napææ wandered forever in the shady valleys. Impatient of mere reality, men filled the universe with phantasies and theories—
“The intelligible forms of ancient poets—
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,