superhuman power of vision and of speech. But in the actual, every Poet is very limited and imperfect. Even the greatest Poets are faulty, full of faults and shortcomings. Each, limited already in his genius, is also limited from without, and does not do even as well as he might. On every side a dull and perverse world of persons and circumstances presses in upon his work.

The fair Poem, a gift to many,-to the Poet himself is often but a poor shadow, a faint reminiscence of some glorious message.

"Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That, with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard, should see them there; And all would cry 'Beware! Beware!' His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread; For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise." Never yet has a Great Poem been really written-only hints and fragments. No one as yet has delivered his message even as well as he might have done. The master-pieces of all Poetry are only such by comparison.

I think-hope-might almost say be lieve, that the best poets are yet to come. Do we not hope for a better earth than has yet been? And we all hope for a better life elsewhere. Shall not that have its Poetry, think you, inexpressibly greater and finer than anything we can now conceive or dream of?-and when Man is more in unison with Heaven (be it here or elsewhere) a fairer, fuller Poetry will surely arise: yet, with all its imperfections, that which we already possess is a great gift.

Of Poetry as written, Poetry as we have it, there are many degrees and varieties.

Every poem need not be great-but it must be genuine in its own kind.

Every poem is the result of two cooperating forces: one, impulse, emotion, inspiration; the other, will, intention, conscious effort. Of true Poems, some have more of the one, and some of the other; and so also of different parts of a Poem, one part is done chiefly from will, another part from impulse. The Poets,

exceedingly various as they are, seem to me to be divisible mainly into two great classes, those whose work springs chiefly from the pure poetic impulse, and those whose work is chiefly produced by will and intention.

Those whom I would place in the second named and lower class (let us call it P.W., from poetic will) are able men who have been turned, by circumstances and choice, in proportions varying in the various instances, to express themselves through the medium of verse, and who on the whole successfully accomplish their aim. Other men, of equal or greater total capacity, are quite ungifted for singing their thoughts; but these of whom we speak have more or less a share of the necessary gift; some true musical impulse moves in the midst of their general intellectual power; each, along with his other qualities, has enough of the metrical, the musical, the poetic, to urge him or at least to enable him to write in verse, and this gives him his claim to be called a poet; though still, one will prove much more of a poet than another. Some poets there are who, in the economy of things, appear to be made for the unpoetic listener-since metrical language works more or less upon all men. In the Poets whom I would reckon in the other class (let us call it class P.I., from poetic impulse), the purely poetic impulse is the master quality, irrepressible and all-pervading; even as the born Painter has a constant delight in color for its own sake.

One might, I think, arrange the names of all Poets known to him (though in certain cases there might be question aud difficulty) broadly into these two large classes. This done, it probably strikes us that such a one standing in the P. W. class is on the whole greater than such another in the P.I.: but we also find that all the greatest Poets in the total list stand in the class marked P.I.; and that the precious qualities peculiar to Metrical Poetry come to us most abundantly from natures wherein also dwell the highest sensibility to beauty, the swiftest movement of thought, the most penetrative intellect. The imagery of these men is usually that of the true Imagination, intuitive, dealing with essential relations of things; the imagery of those who

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and everywhere developed in metre, in balance, in rhythm, in symmetry; the grand original Poiesis. Consider merely the growth of a plant; what the Indian conjuror pretends to do in five minutes is no less wonderful in the slower natural movement continued throughout weeks and months. The little seed sends up its stem like a slender fountain, shaking out the delicate foliage on every side,unfolding bud and flower, leaf for leaf, petal for petal, in due order and proportion with symmetry and freedom gracefully reconciled; beauty is not alone of lily, rose, and palm-tree; every wayside weed is a green poem. More wonderful still the multiform animal creation: Lion and Horse, Bird, Serpent, Fish, Butterfly, Earthworm, Animalcule, each of these, and every living thing, harmoniously organized, and fitted to its place; and above these again our own orderly and rhythmic frame, with its powers and energies.

Then consider in this light the steps and incidents and progression of a human life, from appearance to evanishment. Every chief incident, every group of incidents, seen in the true connection and from the proper point of view, with right insight and right feeling, is poetic. I do not speak of the life of a hero, but of an average common place human being. Birth, Childhood, Youth, Maturity, Old Age, Death ;-a day, a month, a year, a life from craddle to grave,-all together rounds itself, when seen from a little way off, into a consistant and symmetric form, which as a whole is permeated with beauty, rounds itself into a Poem.

Again, looking off from ourselyes, we see every day, not unrelated to us, the landscape with all its variety combined and rounded and poetised within its horizon-circle. This we see with the natural eyes. And with the larger and no less truthful eyes of the imagination, we can see (standing upon the vantage-ground won by Science, and looking beyond and above Science) this Earth-Globe of ours, clad with the seasons, painted with day and night and many-colored clouds, softly spinning round its regulated course. Who doubts of this, more than of the apple which he holds in his hand? What man has ever seen this? It is a Poem, seen only by the eyes of the imagination,

but known also to be a scientific fact. Is there any External Universe (the old question)? We answer, Yes. How can we know anything of it? In the last step, only by the Poetic imagination.

Looking higher still and farther, aided thereby, what find we? On every side, -boundless, inconceivable, yet true and sure, as mere matter of fact as our own five fingers when we hold out our hand, -a Universe crowded with Earths and Suns. They move and mingle unceasingly, in a mighty dance, "Cycle on epicycle, orb on orb." Our utmost imagination, though entirely believing, throws hitherward a most faint and ineffectual glance. This great Universe is the Poem of Poems. The Maker of it is the Primal Poet.

And higher still we may rise above this sphere, into the awful perception of Absolute Truth, when in the soul Religion and Poetry are one; and we recognize Conscience and its laws as a beautiful reality and wonder excelling the Starry Heaven itself.

The plant, the Animal, the World.poems, miracles, are these: Man the greatest. He only, of all known created Beings, has the gift of articulate speech, and of conscious communion with the Divine Source,-this faculty, this communion, cognate powers. So does he share in little the Creative Energy. He orbs his intelligent life into economic, into moral, into social, into religious order. His delight in the universal Beauty he projects into ordonnance of forms and colors and sounds; and for all the faculties of his mind, in due subordination and perfect proportionality, he finds an expression, and the best expression, in the wider, freer, and more various element of Language, and so orbs that also into Poetry-what we agree to call "Poetry" par excel lence. Divine is the impulse, nor are the means unworthy, since Language also (however we may trace its progress) originates from a spiritual, a celestial source. In Language, the Poetic Spirit seeks, finds and uses its own, that which it gave long before, and ever it strives after what is truest and most essential in Language; Rightly is Poetry esteemed miraculous, a gift from above. The impulse comes to all men,

but only a few are so open and sensitive by genius, so unspoilt by circumstance, so unclogged with trifles, unshackled by daily needs, as to vibrate with free and full responsive tone, and convey to others any hint of the heavenly message. Here and there by the bounty of Heaven, some true messenger, among many pretended messengers and many self-deceiving, speaks a work not inadequately. In those good and happy moments of enlargement and power, when memory, hope, experience, faith, imagination, all the faculties, rise together into an emotional mood of love and joy, new, delicious, and creative, a gifted Human Soul, recognizing the presence of eternal beauty, and impelled to communicate its delight, projects itself into the world of language, and there creates beautiful things.

Happy I call him, whatsoever his visible fortune, to whom above the petty and distracting din of the passing day, it is given to hear the far-off movement of an Eternal Harmony. For one Poem that he writes, ten thousand unwritten poems are his. And if he have the gift and courage to report well some snatch or fragment, happy also are they whose ear and soul are open to his message.

In youth, when the scenes are fresh and the spirit is open, it is well to drink of this ambrosia, As people grow older, they are apt to grow more shrewd and decorous, not always more reverent, not in every way wiser. I can imagine that an Old man may gladly find floating on winged words into his memory some early dream, some ideal hope or joy, some high thought, a Poet's gift, and find it truer after all, more deep founded, than much that he deemed reality in life, but which was only fleeting appearance. Perhaps, though long latent, it has not been without its influence.

But whether this or that individual, young or old, reads or never reads, remembers or does not remember any Poetry in a given form of words, the Poets have not the less influenced and modified the world of men into which he and we have been born, the language that we speak, the society in which we live.

If A, or B, cares nothing, has never cared anything for Poetry, 'tis his loss and his defect-the greater, the less he

is conscious of it; let him at least avoid any bragging as to his apathy. He might as reasonably be proud of deafness or blindness.

Poetry like Humanity itself, appears poor and absurd, or rich and profound, partly according to the mood in which we regard it, but mainly according to the wisdom we bring to its estimation.

The Spirit of Poetry is assuredly a divine presence and power. This particular manifestation of it, this Art of Metrical Language, is a fact and a force in the world; its effects delightful, elevating, and enduring; its source hiding beyond investigation,-in the Infinite Deep of things.

Temple Bar.

W. A.

THE DESTINY OF LEON GRENIER.

A YOUNG MAN was walking one evening, in the earlier part of this century, on the banks of the fairest river of France, just where it swept past the town of Arles. He was tall and well made, with delicate features, shadowy blue eyes, and an almost feminine sweetness of expression; and, as he sauntered dreamily along, he half sung, half chanted, an old French ballad in a soft musical voice-for Léon Grenier was a true Provençal, of the type which has reproduced itself in every age, and never failed to have some representatives in that land of romance since the days of the "bon roi René," who still lives in the hearts of the people. He was a poet and a musician, and lived for the most part in an ideal world of his own, where sweet sounds and bright visions beguiled him, like an enchanted knight in some fairy garden of old. Happily for Léon, it was not necessary that he should work for his living, or it would have fared ill with him in this practical age. His father was a substantial farmer, who owned many a goodly vineyard and olive grove, and who had no other child on whom to bestow all his fair possessions and increasing wealth; so Léon had the education of a gentleman, and learnt all manner of accomplishments in the school of the Frères Lazarists; and he was never

asked to soil with hard work the white hands that seemed made only to play ou the guitar, or paint lovely faces of saints for the illuminated borders of his "Livre d'Heures." The good frères would fain have persuaded him that his vocation lay in the calm retirement of the cloister, and that his love of art and "minstrelsy" would find its best satisfaction in the sacred songs of the choir and the decoration of the sanctuary. But Léon absolutely refused to become a monk. He believed in the old theory that with every soul is created another, destined to be its companion for ever, and that all the sorrowful love stories this world has known, have resulted simply from the untoward separation of these predestined souls. He had a vision of the sweet face that had been created for him, and he waited impatiently till it should dawn like a star on his life, and for the time when he, too, should say, in the graceful words of a brother poet :

"L'on dit que deux âmes qui prient
L'une pour l'autre, en même tois
En éternité se marient,

Quand vous priez,-priez pour moi!" His good father and mother longed for this happy consummation almost as much as he did himself. He was the child of their old age. Balthazar Grenier had married late in life, when he found his goods increasing upon him and none to inherit them; and Madelon, his wife, though she was the brightest, briskest little woman in Arles, could count her sixty years bien sonnés.

It was the fondest desire of the kind old couple to see their son married and his little children growing up around them, before they departed from a world that had always been very pleasant to them; and the one great care that troubled their declining years was the fact that Léon was still heart-whole, and gave them not the faintest prospect of a belle fille. He was so very hard to please! In vain Madelon invited the prettiest girls she could find to the house on every occasion possible. Léon would glance at them with an abstracted air, and then wander away by himself to dream of the ethereal beauty that somewhere in the universe was waiting for him as he waited for her; and the coquettish Arlesiennes grumbled not a litle, that one of

the best partis in the town would not even give them a chance of attracting him, by so much as a look or word.

The sun had set on this bright summer evening, while Léon roamed along the banks of the river and sung his low song to its slumbering echoes; the soft light lingering still in the heavens had subdued every tint and mellowed every shadow, till the whole landscape was clothed with an indescribable charm. Léon stood still the better to realize all the beauty round him; and, as he did so, he suddenly saw far up on the river a little pale light that seemed floating on the waters, and was steadily coming towards him. He knew at once what it was. There was a strange custom at Arles in those days, which has doubtless long since disappeared in the march of progress. The great cemetery of the town was, for traditional reasons, the favorite place of burial for many miles around. The peasants who dwelt in the hills and valleys far off, all considered it a matter of the deepest importance that the friends they lost should be buried at Arles; and as the transit by land, or even in boats, would have been too costly a proceeding for their scanty means, the singular plan was adopted of constructing the coffins so that they could float on the river, till the current should bear them unassisted to the place of their rest. This custom was very ancient, and from time immemorial, we believe it had been the prerogative of the monks of a convent placed near the banks of the Rhône, to receive these poor helpless voyagers, and conduct their sepulture with all due religious rites and observances. It was the habit to place no covering on the coffin or on the face of the dead, who were always arrayed in their best attire; but a paper was laid on the breast, stating the name and age of the deceased, and of the surviving relative, who was to be responsible for the needful expense; and a small lamp, enclosed in a lantern, was attached to the head of the coffin, in order to warn passing boats to steer clear of the frail vessel with its mournful freight. Of course, it often happened that it struck against the bank and was submerged, but the Proven cal peasants considered this a less misfortune than an ignominious burial, without even an attempt to reach the sacred ground;