The Project Gutenberg EBook of Heart of Man, by George Edward Woodberry

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Title: Heart of Man

Author: George Edward Woodberry

Release Date: May 12, 2004 [EBook #12329]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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HEART OF MAN

BY

GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY

COPYRIGHT 1899,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

1899

"Deep in the general heart of man"

--WORDSWORTH

TO THE MEMORY OF

EUGENE MONTGOMERY

MY FRIEND

DEAR WAS HIS PRAISE, AND PLEASANT 'TWERE TO ME,
ON WHOSE FAR GRAVE TO-NIGHT THE DEEP SNOWS DRIFT;
IT NEEDS NOT NOW; TOGETHER WE SHALL SEE
HOW HIGH CHRIST'S LILIES O'ER MAN'S LAURELS LIFT

February 18, 1899.

PREFACE

OF the papers contained in this volume
"Taormina" was published in the _Century
Magazine_; the others are new. The intention
of the author was to illustrate how poetry, politics,
and religion are the flowering of the same
human spirit, and have their feeding roots in
a common soil, "deep in the general heart of
men."

COLUMBIA COLLEGE,

February 22, 1809.

CONTENTS

TAORMINA

A NEW DEFENCE OF POETRY

DEMOCRACY

THE RIDE

TAORMINA

I

What should there be in the glimmering lights of a poor fishing-village
to fascinate me? Far below, a mile perhaps, I behold them in the
darkness and the storm like some phosphorescence of the beach; I see the
pale tossing of the surf beside them; I hear the continuous roar borne
up and softened about these heights; and this is night at Taormina.
There is a weirdness in the scene--the feeling without the reality of
mystery; and at evening, I know not why, I cannot sleep without stepping
upon the terrace or peering through the panes to see those lights. At
morning the charm has flown from the shore to the further heights above
me. I glance at the vast banks of southward-lying cloud that envelop
Etna, like deep fog upon the ocean; and then, inevitably, my eyes seek
the double summit of the Taorminian mountain, rising nigh at hand a
thousand feet, almost sheer, less than half