Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/250

220 "large utterances" of intellectual and moral truth show that nothing is impossible, no domain is forbidden, to the poet, that no thought or fact is incapable of ideal treatment. The bard may proudly forego the office of the lecturer, such as that exercised in this discourse, which is by intention didactic and plainly inferior to any fine example of the but alert in each new wonderland. art to which its comment is devoted. Yet the new learning doubtless will inspire more of our expression in the near future, since never was man so apt in translation of nature's oracles, and so royally vouchsafed the freedom of her laboratory, as in this age of physical investigation. Accepting the omen, we make, I say, another claim for the absolute liberty of art. Like Gaspar Beccerra, the artist must work out his vision in the fabric nearest at hand. His theme, his method, shall be his own: always with the passion for beauty, always with an instinct for right. No effort to change the natural bent of genius was ever quite successful, though such an effort often has spoiled a poet altogether.

This brave freedom alone can breed in a poet the The poet's final recognition of beauteous verity. catholicity which justifies Keats' phrase, and insures for his work the fit coherence of beauty and truth. The lover of beauty, in Emerson's "Each and All," marvels at the delicate shells upon the shore:—

The bubbles of the latest wave

Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;