And Heine and Byron, in giving their lives for us, did what the greatest poets and the strongest men have seldom done. Though they have always suffered, yet for us these have rather toiled than suffered. Dante, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Goethe—what exalted, what demiurgic creations have they bequeathed to us, what power to move, what beauty to ponder with unapproachable longing! But these creations have an awing beauty; they keep an unattainable distance and height. When we consider the lives of these greatest spirits, we find them walking apart in the fastnesses of the hills, pursuing arduous ways where few or none may bear them company. Their paths gain upward upon the heights; they gain so far and high that the tinge of that mountain remoteness falls upon them—an airy distance, a deterring shadow; and if ever their voices seem to say, "Follow us," they have not pointed out the way.
But though Byron and Heine were thus rapt up into the mountain in visions, their daily walk and life were in the world; its dust and soilure cling to them, we see them wavering and going astray. Their very wanderings bring them nearer to us, who sojourn; their desire, their aspiration, their failures make the wiser use of opportunity possible to any of us who may have been born away from home.
Titus Munson Coan.
THE HOME OF MY HEART.
Not here in the populous town,
In the playhouse or mart,
Not here in the ways gray and brown,
But afar on the green-swelling down,