The great use of these personal songs to people was that it helped them to feel at home in the world. ‘The first poet of human things,’ says the Countess Martinengo-Cæsaresco, ‘was perhaps one who stood in the presence of death. In the twilight that went before civilization the loves of men were prosaic and intellectual unrest was remote, but there was already Rachel weeping for her children and would not be comforted because they are not.’ Death as a mystery was a horror too great to be borne. But death made into a song could be looked at and in some degree known. The awful sense of helplessness as people stood beside a fresh grave was alleviated by their singing of their grief. When the mystery had become incarnated in a work of art they could face it and know who their enemy was. Every man who feels emotions craves expression of them. The ability to express is perhaps what separates man from the animals. The man who cannot achieve the expression of what he feels sinks back into a spiritual numbness in which joy and sorrow are of less importance. But the man who is able to see the things that are within him and about him--to see them clearly enough to express them in songs--is able to take his place in life and go on to more consciousness and more power. Something like this is the service songs have performed to men’s souls. But, most of all, of course, songs have taught men how to love. As men began to realize that love must be more than a mere blind craving they had to answer the question: ‘How much do I love her? How do I love her?’ And the question had to be answered in some kind of concrete terms. One old French lover says in his song that if King Henry gave to him the town of Paris on condition that he give up the love of his sweetheart, he would reply to Henry the King: ‘Take back your town of Paris; I love my sweetheart more, heigh-ho, I love my sweetheart more.’ And when we read the fine straightforward old French in which the song is sung we know that he meant it. It is evident that the whole estate of love and marriage has risen to a vastly higher level when the lover, instead of saying, ‘I want my sweetheart,’ can sing, ‘I want my sweetheart more than I want the town of Paris.’ So songs gave to life definite meanings and values. IV