Never before had words, single words, meant so much.
What expansion, what liberty of heart, in speech: how associable to
music, to singing, the written lines! He sang of the lark, and it
was the lark's voluble self. The physical beauty of humanity lent
itself to every object, animate or inanimate, to the very hours and
lapses and changes of time itself. An almost burdensome fulness of
expression haunted the gestures, the very dress, the personal
ornaments, of the people on the highway. Even Jacques Bonhomme at
his labour, or idling for an hour, borrowed from his love, homely as
it was, a touch of dignity or grace, and some secret of utterance,
which made [57] one think of Italy or Greece. The voice of the
shepherd calling, the chatter of the shepherdess turning her spindle,
seemed to answer, or wait for answer,--to be fragments of love's
ideal and eternal communing.
It was the power of "modernity," as renewed in every successive age
for genial youth, protesting, defiant of all sanction in these
matters, that the true "classic" must be of the present, the force
and patience of present time.
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