Page:Edgar Allan Poe - how to know him.djvu/219

Rh 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 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.

[From The Poetic Principle. See the two preceding extracts. Note in the last paragraph how Poe analyzes beauty into the five-fold appeal of sight, sound, odor, character, and woman. The two paragraphs form a model of effective conclusion. Both are recapitulatory; but the first is abstract—the second concrete. The second, moreover, not only recapitulates and expands, but enforces the main thesis by an appeal that is itself a culminating example of the beauty and psychic elevation with which the essay deals.]