If his reason acknowledges only inward strength as the attribute of human dignity, yet his imagination feels the outward spell that swayed the Roman genius, through the symbols of power and authority, through great spectacles, and in impressive ceremonials.
But it is with more heart-felt sympathy, and with not less imaginative emotion, that he recognises the deep wonder and the infinite pathos of human life. There is perhaps no passage in any poet which reveals more truthfully that union of feelings in meditating on the strangeness and sadness of our mortal destiny than the well-known passage describing the birth of every infant into the world—
Tum porro puer, ut saevis proiectus ab undis
Navita, nudus humi iacet, infans, indigus omni
Vitali auxilio, cum primum in luminis oras
Nixibus ex alvo matris natura profudit,
Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aecumst
Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum[48].
With what truth and naiveté is the complaint of the husbandman over his ineffectual labour and scanty returns echoed!—
Iamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator