Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/119

 has its source; and toward this Idea—retained as a dim hope—it is ever prone to revert. The true Poet is the man in whose constitution the tendency so to revert to this Idea is an instinct born with him, and with whom it has become a habit, and an inspiration.

Whatever it may be, within the compass of Poetry, that is the most resplendent, and whatever it is that awakens the profoundest emotions—whether they be joyful or sorrowful—whatever it is that breathes tenderness, as well as whatever kindles hope—draws its power so to touch the springs of feeling from the same latent conception of a perfectness and a happiness possible to man, and which, when it is set forth in words, presents itself as a tradition of Paradise. Poetry, of any class, would take but a feeble hold of the human mind—distracted as it is with cares, broken as it is with toils, sorrowing in recollection of yesterday, and in fear as to to-morrow—if it did not find there a shadowy belief, like an almost forgotten dream, of a world where once all things were bright, gay, pure, and blessed in love. The Poet comes to us in our troubled mood, professing himself to be one who is qualified to put before us, in the vivid colours of reality, these conceptions of a felicity which we vaguely imagine, and think of as lost to humanity; and which yet, perhaps, is recoverable. We turn with distaste—even with contempt or resentment—from the false professor of the noblest of arts whose creations con-