The Song of Solomon : and the Lamentations of Jeremiah

HEBREW ELEGIES 71
makes evident. It paints the beauty of sorrow. It is
able to do so only because it contemplates the scene
indirectly, as portrayed in the mirror of thought. An
immediate vision of pain is itself wholly painful. If the
agony is intense, and if no relief can be offered, we instinctively
turn aside from the sickening sight. Only
a brutalised people could find amusement in the ghastly
spectacle of the Roman amphitheatre. It is cited as a
proof of Domitian's diabolical cruelty that the emperor
would have dying slaves brought before him in order
that he might watch the facial expression of their last
agonies. Such scenes are not fit subjects for art.
The famous group of the Laocoon is considered by
many to have passed the boundaries of legitimate
representation in the terror and torment of its subject
and Ecce Homos and pictures of the crucifixion can
only be defended from a similar condemnation when
the profound spiritual significance of the subjects is
made to dominate the bare torture. Faced squarely, in
the glare of day, pain and death are grim ogres, the
ugliness of which no amount of sentiment can disguise.
You can no more find poetry in a present Inferno than
flowers in the red vomit of a live volcano. Men who
have seen war tell us they have discovered nothing
attractive in its dreadful scenes of blood and anguish
and fury. What could be more revolting to contem-
plate than the sack of a city,— fire and sword in every
street, public buildings razed to the ground, honoured
monuments defaced, homes ravaged, children torn from
the arms of their parents, young girls dragged away
to a horrible fate, lust, robbery, slaughter rampant
without shame or restraint, the wild beast in the con-
querors let loose, and a whole army, suddenly freed
from all rules of discipline, behaving like a swarm of
;