Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.