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for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which through
the poem, or through the music, we attain to but brief and
indeterminate glimpses.
The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness this
struggle, on the part of souls fittingly constituted has given
to the world all that which it (the world) has ever been
enabled at once to understand and to feel as poetic.
The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in
various modes in Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in
the Dance very especially in Music and very peculiarly, and
with a wide field, in the com position of the Landscape
Garden. Our present theme, however, has regard only to its
manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly on the
topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that
Music, in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is
of so vast a moment in Poetry as never to be wisely
rejected is so vitally important an adjunct, that he is simply
silly who declines its assistance, I will not now pause to
maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music perhaps that
the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when
inspired by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles the creation of
supernal Beauty. It may be, indeed, that here this sublime
end is, now and then, attained in fact. We are often made to
feel, with a shivering delight, that from an earthly harp are
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stricken notes which cannot have been unfamiliar to the
angels. And thus there can be little doubt that in the union of
Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the
widest field for the Poetic development. The old Bards and
Minnesingers had advantages which we do not possess and
Thomas Moore, singing his own songs, was, in the most
legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems.
To recapitulate then: I would define, in brief, the Poetry
of words as The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. Its sole
arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience it
has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no
concern whatever either with Duty or with Truth.
A few words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which
is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most
intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the
Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it
possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement of
the soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and
which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the
satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the
excitement of the heart. I make Beauty, therefore using the
word as inclusive of the sublime I make Beauty the province
of the poem, simply because it is an obvious rule of Art that
effects should be made to spring as directly as possible from
their causes: no one as yet having been weak enough to
deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least most
readily attainable in the poem. It by no means follows,
however, that the incitements of Passion or the precepts of
Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be introduced
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into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve
incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the
work: but the true artist will always contrive to tone them
down in proper subjection to that Beauty which is the
atmosphere and the real essence of the poem.
I cannot better introduce the few poems which I shall
present for your consideration, than by the citation of the
Proem to Longfellow's Waif":
The day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an Eagle in his flight.
I see the lights of the village
Gleam through the rain and the mist,
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me,
That my soul cannot resist;
A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only
As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,
Some simple and heartfelt lay,
That shall soothe this restless feeling,
And banish the thoughts of day.
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Not from the grand old masters,
Not from the bards sublime,
Whose distant footsteps echo
Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavor;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who through long days of labor,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.
Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.
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