81 The Arts O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou, But falls into abatement and low price, 82 Those instruments with which high Spirits call The future from its cradle, and the past Out of its grave, and make the present last In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, Now, therein, of all sciences (I speak still of human) according to the human conceits, is our Poet the Monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it. Nay he doth, as if your journey should lie through a fair Vineyard, at the first, give you a cluster of Grapes, that, full of that taste, you may long to pass further. He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness; but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for the well-enchanting skill of Music; and with a tale forsooth he cometh unto you, with tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney-corner... Poetry 83 84 .. The poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure. . . Nor let this necessity. tion of the Poet's art. be considered as a degrada It is far otherwise. It is an acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgment the more sincere because not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love; further, it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows and feels and lives and moves. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all Science. . . In spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs,-in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed, the Poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. . . Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge—it is as immortal as the heart of man. So as it appeareth that Poesy serveth and conferreth to magnanimity [and] morality and to delectation. And therefore it was ever thought to have some participation of divineness, because it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things to the desires of the F 85 Poetry mind whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind unto the nature of things. .. Poetry, the hand that wrings, 86 Poetry awakens and enlarges the mind by a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world... The great secret of morals is Love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good is the imagination... Poetry enlarges the circumference of the Imagination [and] strengthens the faculty which is the organ of the moral nature of man, in the same manner as exercise strengthens a limb. 87 .. O lovely lily clean, O lily springing green, O lily bursting white, Poetic Dream Dear lily of delight, That I may flower to men! . 88 MOST sweet it is with unuplifted eyes 89 On a poet's lips I slept Dreaming like a love-adept In the sound his breathing kept; Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses. The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, 90 The Immortal Muse Thou art light and thou art free, Where the splendours greatest be... Thou a seraph art to go All undaunted to and fro Where the fiercest ardours glow.. Thou an angel art, and well Thou a spirit art most sweet, 91 SHALL I compare thee to a summer's day? So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, |