"
After a pause she went over this subject as though she were not
satisfied that she had made it clear.
"I have always said that the real pathos of things is the grief that
comes to us in life when life is at its best--when no one is to
blame--when no one has committed a fault--when suffering is meted out
to us as the reward of our perfect obedience to the laws of nature. In
earlier years when we used to read Keats together, who most of all of
the world's poets felt the things that pass, even then I was wondering
at the way in which he brings this out: that to understand Sorrow it
must be separated from sorrows: they would be like shadows darkening
the bright disk of life's clear tragedy, thus rendering it less
bravely seen.
"And so he is always telling us not to summon sad pictures nor play
with mournful emblems; not to feign ourselves as standing on the banks
of Lethe, gloomiest of rivers; nor to gather wolf's bane and twist the
poison out of its tight roots; nor set before us the cup of hemlock;
nor bind about our temples the ruby grape of nightshade; nor count
over the berries of the yew tree which guards sad places; nor think of
the beetle ticking in the bed post, nor watch the wings of the death
moth, nor listen to the elegy of the owl--the voice of ruins.
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