Page:Influence of Poetry.pdf/7

Rh of laughter. We must either be convinced or sneered into things. Neither calculation nor sarcasm are the elements for poetry. A remark made by Scott to one of his great compeers shows how he knew the age in which he was fated to end his glorious career:—"Ah—it is well that we have made our reputation!" The personal is the destroyer of the spiritual; and to the former everything is now referred. We talk of the author's self more than his works, and we know his name rather than his writings. There is a base macadamizing spirit in literature; we seek to level all the high places of old. But till we can deny that fine "farther looking hope" which gives such a charm to Shakspeare's confessional sonnets; till we can deny that "The Paradise Lost" was the work of old age, poverty, and neglect, roused into delightful exertion by a bright futurity; till we can deny the existence of those redeemers of humanity—we must admit, also, the existence of a higher, more prophetic, more devoted and self-relying spirit than is to be accounted for on the principles either of vanity or of lucre: we shall be compelled to admit that its inspiration is, indeed, "A heavenly breath Along an earthly lyre." Methinks there are some mysteries in the soul on whose precincts it were well to "tread with unsandalled foot." Poetry like religion requires faith, and we are the better and happier for yielding it. The imagination is to the mind what life is to the body—its vivifying and active part. In antiquity, poetry had to create, it now has to preserve. Its first effort was against barbarism, its last is against selfishness. A world of generous emotions, of kindly awakenings, those "Which bid the perished pleasures move In mournful mockery o'er the soul of love;" a world of thought and feeling, now lies in the guardianship of the poet. These are they who sit in the gate called the beautiful, which leads to the temple. Its meanest priests should feel that their office is sacred. Enthusiasm is no passion of the drawing-room, or of the pence-table: its home is the heart, and its hope is afar. This is too little the creed of our generation; yet, without such creed, poetry has neither present life nor future immortality. As Whitehead finely says in his poem of "The Solitary,"— "Not for herself, not for the wealth she brings, Is the muse wooed and won, but for the deep,  Occult, profound, unfathomable things,— The engine of our tears whene'er we weep, The impulse of our dreams whene'er we sleep,    The mysteries that our sad hearts possess, Which, and the keys whereof, the Muse doth keep,—    Oh! to kindle soft humanity, to raise, With gentle strength infused, the spirit bowed;    To pour a second sunlight on our days, And draw the restless lightning from our cloud; To cheer the humble and to dash the proud.    Besought in peace to live, in peace to die,—    The poet's task is done—Oh, Immortality!" He is only a true poet, who can say, in the words of Coleridge, "My task has been my delight; I have not looked either to guerdon or praise, and to me Poetry is its own exceeding great reward."