"Poets," says Hazlitt, "are a longer-lived race than heroes: they
breathe more of the air of immortality. They survive more entire in
their thoughts and acts. We have all that Virgil or Homer did, as much
as if we had lived at the same time with them. We can hold their works
in our hands, or lay them on our pillows, or put them to our lips.
Scarcely a trace of what the others did is left upon the earth, so as
to be visible to common eyes. The one, the dead authors, are living men,
still breathing and moving in their writings; the others, the conquerors
of the world, are but the ashes in an urn. The sympathy [19so to speak]
between thought and thought is more intimate and vital than that between
thought and action. Thought is linked to thought as flame kindles into
flame; the tribute of admiration to the MANES of departed heroism is
like burning incense in a marble monument. Words, ideas, feelings, with
the progress of time harden into substances: things, bodies, actions,
moulder away, or melt into a sound--into thin air.... Not only a man's
actions are effaced and vanish with him; his virtues and generous
qualities die with him also. His intellect only is immortal, and
bequeathed unimpaired to posterity. Words are the only things that last
for ever." [1918]
CHAPTER XI.--COMPANIONSHIP IN MARRIAGE.
"Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks,
Shall win my love."--SHAKSPEARE.
"In the husband Wisdom, In the wife Gentleness."--GEORGE
HERBERT.
"If God had designed woman as man's master, He would have
taken her from his head; If as his slave, He would have
taken her from his feet; but as He designed her for his
companion and equal, He took her from his side."--SAINT
AUGUSTINE.--'DE CIVITATE DEI.'
"Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above
rubies.... Her husband is known in the gates, and he sitteth
among the elders of the land.... Strength and honour are her
clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come. She openeth
her mouth with wisdom, and in her tongue is the law of
kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her husband, and
eateth not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and
call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her."--
PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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