When Keats stands regarding the figures sculptured upon the Grecian urn, it is only a cunning sign of the unspeakable misery of his own life that he finds the youth happy because though he can never succeed in his chase he can never fall any farther behind in it; to Keats' teased aspiration a certain sense of rest comes out of the very fixity of a man suspended in marble. "Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss Though winning near the goal! Yet do not grieve: She cannot fade though thou hast not thy bliss, Forever wilt thou love and she be fair." A true old Greek despair fills these lines with a sorrow which is all the more penetrating when we hear it surging out from among the keen and energetic personalities of modern times,--personalities which will not accept any youth's happiness of being howsoever near to his love if that happiness be coupled with the condition that he is never to be nearer,--personalities which find their whole summary in continuous growth, increase, movement. And if we remember that even when the condition of primal man is very far from the miserable state depicted by Prometheus, the case grows all the stronger of that Golden Age in which the antique imagination took great delight, not all unshared, it must be confessed, by later times, fails to please the modern personality. For example in Chaucer's poem called _Aetas Prima_, that is, the first or Golden Age, we have the most engaging picture of man in a pre-Promethean time, drawn at a far different point of view from that of Prometheus in our play. How taking seems this simplicity: "A blisful lyfe, a peseable and so swete, Leddyn the peplis in the former age; Thei helde them paied with the frutes they ete, Wich that the feldes gafe them by usage; Thei etyn most hawys and such pownage And dronken watyr of the colde welle. Yet was the ground not woundyd with the plough, But corne upsprange onsowe of mannes hand; No man yit knew the furous of hys land: No man yit fier owt of the flynt fand. No flesche ne wyst offence of hegge or spere; No coyne ne knew man whiche was false or trewe: No shyppe yit karfe the wawys grene and blewe: No marchand yit ne fet owtlandische ware. Yit were no palys chambris, ne no hallys; In cavys and in wodes soft and swete Sleptyn thys blessyd folk withowte wallys On grasse or levys in parfite joy and quiete. Unforgyd was the hauberke and the plate; The lambisshe pepyl, voyd of alle vice, Hadden noo fantasye to debate, But eche of hem wold oder well cheriche: No pride, none envy, none avarice, No lord, no taylage by no tyrannye, Humblesse, and pease, good fayth the emprise.