Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/24

xiv, I have seen that it is only a specific manifestation of that all-pervading force, of which each one possesses a share at his control, and which communicates the feeling and thought of the human soul to its fellows. Thus I am moved to perceive that for its activity it depends, like all other arts, upon Vibrations,—upon ethereal waves conveying impressions of vision and sound to mortal senses, and so to the immortal consciousness whereto those senses minister.

In my opening lecture, I see that mention is made of the disenchantment to which "that airy nothing, the rainbow," has been subjected. But it is precisely because we have discovered its nothingness,—because we know its only being consists in vibrations which impart our sense of light, and of the color scale—that Lippman has been able at last to seize this color scale, and to fix the negative reflecting the light of the eye, the flush of the cheek, to make the sunset eternal, to secure the myriad tints of landscape,—in short, to make a final conquest of nature, and thus to enlarge our basis for the indispensable higher structures of the painter and the poet. Such realism cannot be ignored. It does not lessen ideality; it affords new inspiration. Each time when science fulfils our hope, the poet will be charmed to dream anew, and to impart from