Yet Moody was indeed a rebel against the religious and social muddle in which he found himself. Something red and pagan poured into his veins the instinct of defiance to a jealous god and to pale customs. The best of the Greek was his; instinctively he turned at last to Greek drama for his form and to Greek mythology for his figures. There was in him that σπονδη which Aristotle believed essential for the poet—a quality so rare among us that the literal translation, “high seriousness,” conveys little hint of its warmth, its nobility and splendor. He believed in the body as in the soul; and his conception of the godly was rounded and not inhuman. Dionysus was every bit as real to him as the man of sorrows. Is not this the new spirit of America which we wish to nourish? And is there not a peculiar virtue in the poet who with the strong arm of the pilgrim and the consecration of the puritan fought for the kingdom of joy among us? In _The Masque of Judgment_ he pictures a group of heroic unrepentant rebels against divine grace who have not yet fallen under the sword of the destroying angel. Of them one, a youth, sings: Better with captives in the slaver’s pen Hear women sob, and sit with cursing men, Yea, better here among these writhen lips, Than pluck out from the blood its old companionships. If God had set me for one hour alone, Apart from clash of sword And trumpet pealéd word, I think I should have fled unto his throne. But always ere the dayspring shook the sky, Somewhere the silver trumpets were acry,— Sweet, high, oh, high and sweet! What voice could summon so but the soul’s paraclete? Whom should such voices call but me, to dare and die? O ye asleep here in the eyrie town, Ye mothers, babes, and maids, and aged men, The plain is full of foemen! Turn again— Sleep sound, or waken half Only to hear our happy bugles laugh Lovely defiance down, As through the steep Grey streets we sweep, Each horse and man a ribbéd fan to scatter all that chaff! How from the lance-shock and the griding sword Untwine the still small accents of the Lord? How hear the Prince of Peace and Lord of Hosts Speak from the zenith ’mid his marshalled ghosts, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay; Cease thou and come away!” Or having seen and hearkened, how refrain From crying, heart and brain, “So, Lord, Thou sayest it, Thine— But also mine, ah, surely also mine! Else why and for what good The strength of arm my father got for me By perfect chastity, This glorious anger poured into my blood Out of my mother’s depths of ardency?” So the sanctity of the warrior. And the sanctity of other passions is there, too. A woman says: