Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/56

26 subject, says that "absolute poetry is the concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional and rhythmical language." Here we certainly are getting out of the mists. In these formulas an effort for precision is apparent, and the latest one would be satisfactory did it insist more definitely, within itself, upon the office of the imagination, and upon the interpretative gift which is the very soul of our art.

The ideas presented by many of the poets seem The personal limitation. in the main conformed to their own respective gifts, and therefore in a sense limited. Thus, years after Schlegel had termed poetry "the power of creating what is beautiful, and representing it to the eye or ear," our disciple of taste, Poe, who avowed that poetry had been to him "not a purpose, but a passion," amended Schlegel's terms with the adjective needed to complete his own Lecture on "The Poetic Principle," 1845. definition—"the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty." Never did a wayward romancer speak with a sincerer honesty of the lyrical art, and he clenched his statement by adding that its sole arbiter was Taste. If you accept beauty in a comprehensive sense, including all emotions, truths, and ethics, accept this definition as precise and unflinching. But Poe confines its meaning to the domain of æsthetics, which of itself he thought opposed to vice on account of her deformity; furthermore, he restricts it to what he terms supernal beauty, the