Page 100 - The Story of My Lif

While Sin creeps grinning through His house of Time.

It was the Iliad that made Greece my paradise. I was familiar with the story of
Troy before I read it in the original, and consequently I had little difficulty in
making the Greek words surrender their treasures after I had passed the
borderland of grammar. Great poetry, whether written in Greek or in English,
needs no other interpreter than a responsive heart. Would that the host of those

who make the great works of the poets odious by their analysis, impositions and
laborious comments might learn this simple truth! It is not necessary that one
should be able to define every word and give it its principal parts and its
grammatical position in the sentence in order to understand and appreciate a fine
poem. I know my learned professors have found greater riches in the Iliad than I
shall ever find; but I am not avaricious. I am content that others should be wiser
than I. But with all their wide and comprehensive knowledge, they cannot
measure their enjoyment of that splendid epic, nor can I. When I read the finest
passages of the Iliad, I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the
narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are
forgotten—my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of
the heavens are mine!

My admiration for the Aeneid is not so great, but it is none the less real. I read it
as much as possible without the help of notes or dictionary, and I always like to
translate the episodes that please me especially. The word-painting of Virgil is
wonderful sometimes; but his gods and men move through the scenes of passion
and strife and pity and love like the graceful figures in an Elizabethan mask,
whereas in the Iliad they give three leaps and go on singing. Virgil is serene and
lovely like a marble Apollo in the moonlight; Homer is a beautiful, animated
youth in the full sunlight with the wind in his hair.

How easy it is to fly on paper wings! From “Greek Heroes” to the Iliad was no
day’s journey, nor was it altogether pleasant. One could have traveled round the
word many times while I trudged my weary way through the labyrinthine mazes
of grammars and dictionaries, or fell into those dreadful pitfalls called