POETRY AND IMAGINATION 



* Discovering daily more and more about, 



In that immense and boundless ocean 

 Of Nature's riches, never yet found out. 

 Nor fore-clos'd with the wit of any man/ 



The new-born faith of the English in their national 



speech took heart of grace from the discoveries of the 



voyagers. Samuel Daniel, whose poem Musophilus (1601) 



is a lonff passionate hymn in praise of the new ideals, ?^f5 . . 

 u J • -1 11. r u • Elizabethan 



has expressed m a smgle couplet the two-told aspira- i^gal. 



ation of the age: 



^ What good is like to this. 

 To do worthy the writing, and to write 

 Worthy the reading, and the world's delight ? ' 



The re-discovered glories of the ancients had for a 

 time cast a damp upon national ambition. It seemed 

 a paltry vanity in a writer of English to hope to win 

 literary immortality for a speech shut up within the 

 limits of a single island, and cut off from close com- 

 merce with the countries which inherited the traditions 

 of Greece and Rome. By way of answer to this doubt 

 Daniel points prophetically to the New World. The 

 Ancients civilised their world ; another world has been 

 given to the Moderns to civilise ; the native gifts ^'^^ English 

 of Southern eloquence and poetry may hereafter be 

 * bettered by the patience of the North,' and may 

 achieve a yet greater fame : 



* And who, in time, knows whither we may vent 



The treasure of our tongue h To what strange shores 

 This gain of our best glory shall be sent 



To enrich unknowing nations with our stores ? 

 What worlds in th' yet unformed Occident 



May come refin'd with the accents that are ours? 



Or who can tell for what great work in hand 

 The greatness of our style is now ordained ? 



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