The Bible opens joyously with _Genesis_ and comes to a close with the threatening _Apocalypse_.

The modern ode is still inspired, but is no longer ignorant.

It meditates more than it scrutinizes; its musing is melancholy.

We see, by its painful labour, that the muse has taken the drama for her mate.
To make clear by a metaphor the ideas that we have ventured to put forth, we will compare early lyric poetry to a placid lake which reflects the clouds and stars; the epic is the stream which flows from the lake, and rushes on, reflecting its banks, forests, fields and cities, until it throws itself into the ocean of the drama.

Like the lake, the drama reflects the sky; like the stream, it reflects its banks; but it alone has tempests and measureless depths.
The drama, then, is the goal to which everything in modern poetry leads.