The Sun of Poetic Truth 235primarily or directly, nor at any time in a set formal will taking
that as its function and aim, with the presentation of intellectual
concepts to the reason or with truth of science or with moral
betterment or the working out of religious aspiration, not often
even with so near a thing to it as religious emotion and love.
But yet because of that greater affinity we see it actually doing
what is an equivalent to these things by its own power, in a
strange and beautiful mould, with an indirect and yet subtly
direct touch. The poet too brings out sometimes as if by acci-
dent, sometimes with a conscious intention the same essential
truths as the philosopher or the man of religion. An instance
or two will be sufficient to show the approximation and the
difference. Religion brings us a command to love our neighbour
as ourselves and even our enemies, a thing impossible to our
normal nature, a law honoured with the consent of the lips
and universally ignored in the observance. A few only seeking
perfection in spiritual experience discover in it the natural rule
of our real and our highest being, quite possible if we can only
get some abiding realisation of that secret oneness which is the
foundation of the law of universal love. Then, not seeking this at
all but only poetic delight or, if you are so inclined, the criticism
of life, we listen to Creon’s fierce reproach to Antigone that in her
refusal to hate the national enemy she stands unnaturally apart
from the mind and heart of all her people and hear suddenly
start out the high and proud reply of one lonely and doomed
but inflexibly true to her nature, her soul’s will under the shadow
of a cruel death, “Not to join in hate, but to join in love was I
born!” The Athenian poet intended no moral instruction, calls
up no religious emotion into his line, is concerned only with a
crucial situation in life, the revolt of natural affection against
the rigid claim of the law, nation, State. It is a simple cry of the
voice of nature and life, yet there breathes behind it a greater
thought which is not so far from the truth underlying religious
teaching and spiritual experience. The poet, his eyes fixed on
life, shows us as if by accident the seed in our normal nature
which can grow into the prodigious spiritual truth of universal
love. He has to do it in his own way in the mould of poetic