Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/84



OETRY will never disown its relationship to the beautiful and the sublime in the visible world; in fact it has always proved its dependence upon influences of this order. Born and nurtured, not at hazard on any spot, but only in chosen regions, it finds at hand, for giving utterance to the mysteries of the inner life, an abundance of material symbols—fit for purposes of this kind—among the objects of sense. It is the function of Poetry to effect such an assimilation of the material with the immaterial as shall produce one world of thought and of emotion—the visible and the invisible, intimately commingled.

Poetry, nursed on the lap of Nature, will have its preferences—it must make its selection; and this, not merely as to the exterior decorations of its abode, but even as to the solid framework of the country which it favours; there must be, not only a soil, and a climate, and a various vegetation, favourable to its training; but a preparation must have