HEART OF MAN

GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY

 

To the Memory of

 

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 

  P 1/137 next