live.

The time of illusion, then, is the beautiful moment of passion; it
represents the artistic zone in which the poet or romance writer ought to
be free to do the very best that he can. He may go beyond that zone; but
then he has only two directions in which he can travel. Above it there is
religion, and an artist may, like Dante, succeed in transforming love into
a sentiment of religious ecstasy. I do not think that any artist could do
that to-day; this is not an age of religious ecstasy. But upwards there is
no other way to go. Downwards the artist may travel until he finds himself
in hell. Between the zone of idealism and the brutality of realism there
are no doubt many gradations. I am only indicating what I think to be an
absolute truth, that in treating of love the literary master should keep
to the period of illusion, and that to go below it is a dangerous
undertaking. And now, having tried to make what are believed to be proper
distinctions between great literature on this subject and all that is not
great, we may begin to study a few examples. I am going to select at
random passages from English poets and others, illustrating my meaning.

Tennyson is perhaps the most familiar to you among poets of our own time;
and he has given a few exquisite examples of the ideal sentiment in
passion. One is a concluding verse in the beautiful song that occurs in
the monodrama of "Maud," where the lover, listening in the garden, hears
the steps of his beloved approaching.

She is coming, my own, my sweet,
Were it ever so airy a tread,
My heart would hear her and beat,
Were it earth in an earthy bed;
My dust would hear her and beat,
Had I lain for a century dead;
Would start and tremble under her feet,
And blossom in purple and red.

This is a very fine instance of the purely idea emotion--extravagant, if
you like, in the force of the imagery used, but absolutely sincere and
true; for the imagination of love is necessarily extravagant. It would be
quite useless to ask whether the sound of a girl's footsteps could really
waken a dead man; we know that love can fancy such things quite naturally,
not in one country only but everywhere. An Arabian poem written long
before the time of Mohammed contains exactly the same thought in simpler
words; and I think that there are some old Japanese songs containing
something similar. All that the statement really means is that the voice,
the look, the touch,