Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/203

Rh the modern art school. Naturalness had come back with Burns, Cowper, and Wordsworth; intensity Modern æstheticism. and freedom with Byron; then the absolute poetic movement of Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, and of that æsthetic propagandist, Leigh Hunt, began its prolonged influence. Poetry is again an art, constructed and bedecked with precision. So potent the charm of this restoration, that it has outrun all else: there is a multitude of minor artists, each of whom, if he cannot read the heart of Poesy, casts his little flower beside her as she sleeps. Who can tell but some of "L'art robuste seul a l'éternité. these blossoms may be selected by Fame and Time, that wait upon her? Ars Victrix wears her little trophies as proudly as her great. Dobson's paraphrase on Gautier became at once a proverb, from instant recognition of its truth:

In this one lecture, you see, I dwell upon the technical features that lend enchantment Elemebts of concrete poetic beauty. to poetry in the concrete. How, then, does the beauty of a poem avail? Primitively, as