Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love. Yet love me — wilt thou? Open thine heart wide, And fold within, the wet wings of thy dove. - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Who so loves believes the impossible.

And yet, because I love thee, I obtain
From that same love this vindicating grace,
To live on still in love, and yet in vain

The critics say that epics have died out with Agamemnon and the goat-nursed gods; I'll not believe it. I could never deem as Payne Knight did, that Homer's heroes measured twelve feet high. They were but men: -his Helen's hair turned grey like any plain Miss Smith's who wears a front; And Hector's infant whimpered at a plume as yours last Friday at a turkey-cock. All heroes are essential men, and all men possible heroes: every age, heroic in proportions, double faced, looks backward and before, expects a morn and claims an epos.