rials of a happiness which may have
been brief, but which, while it lasted,
had a touch of the divine in it; for
men are never nearer divinity than in
their creative impulses and moments.
Homer may have been blind; but if
he composed the epics which bear his
name he must have known moments
of purer happiness than his most for-
tunate contemporary; Dante missed
the lesser comforts of life, but there
were hours of transcendent joy in his
lonely career. For the highest joy
of which men taste is the full, free,
and noble putting forth of the power
that is in them; no moments in human
experience are so thrilling as those in
which a man's soul goes out from him
into some adequate and beautiful form
of expression. In the act of creation
a man incorporates his own personality
into the visible world about him, and

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v?