Classic and Contemporary Poetry
EURIPIDES, by EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON Poet's Biography First Line: If in less stately mould thy thoughts were cast Last Line: But grief alone can teach us what is man! Alternate Author Name(s): Bulwer, Edward; Lytton Of Knebworth, 1st Baron; Lytton, Edward George Earle Bulwer, Lord Subject(s): Euripides (484-406 B.c.) | ||||||||
LONE, mid the loftier wonders of the past, Thou stand'st -- more household to the modern age; In a less stately mould thy thoughts were cast Than thy twin masters of the Grecian stage. Thou mark'st that change in manners when the frown Of the vast Titans vanish'd from the earth, When a more soft philosophy stole down From the dark heavens to man's familiar hearth. With thee, came love and woman's influence o'er Her sterner lord; and poesy till then A sculpture, warmed to painting; what before Glass'd but the dim-seen gods, grew now to men Clear mirrors, and the passions took their place, Where a serene if solemn awe had made The scene a temple to the elder race: The struggles of humanity became Not those of Titan with a god, nor those Of the great heart with that unbodied name By which our ignorance would explain our woes And justify the heavens, -- the ruthless Fate; But truer to the human life, thine art Made thought with thought and will with will debate, And placed the god and Titan in the heart; Thy Phoedra, and thy pale Medea were The birth of that more subtle wisdom, which Dawn'd in the world with Socrates, to bear Its last most precious offspring in the rich And genial soul of Shakspeare. And for this Wit blamed the living, dullness taunts the dead. And yet the Pythian did not speak amiss When in thy verse the latent truths she read, And hailed thee wiser than thy tribe. Of thee All genius in our softer times hath been The grateful echo, and thy soul we see Still through our tears -- upon the later scene. Doth the Italian, for his frigid thought Steal but a natural pathos, -- hath the Gaul Something of passion to his phantoms taught, Ope but thy page -- and, lo, the source of all! But that which made thee wiser than the schools Was the long sadness of a much-wrong'd life; The sneer of satire, and the gibe of fools, The broken hearth-gods, and the perjured wife. For sorrow is the messenger between The poet and men's bosoms: -- Genius can Fill with unsympathizing gods the scene, But grief alone can teach us what is man! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE FROGS: A 'EURIPIDEAN' CHORUS by ARISTOPHANES THE FROGS: AN 'AESCHYLEAN' CHORUS by ARISTOPHANES THE FROGS: THE FATAL OIL-FLASK by ARISTOPHANES THE FROGS: THE FROGS' SONG by ARISTOPHANES THE FROGS: THE RIVAL POETS by ARISTOPHANES THESMOPHORIAZUSAE: EURIPIDES by ARISTOPHANES A PRIZE FOR EURIPIDES by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON IPHIGENIA AT AULIS by EURIPIDES MEDEA (A FRAGMENT IN DRAMA FORM, AFTER EURIPIDES) by AMY LEVY SONG, FR. ERNEST MALTRAVERS by EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON A SPENDTHRIFT by EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON ABSENT YET PRESENT by EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON |
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