They can never be assisted by poets to perceive--some may,
but they never can. The poetic quality is not marshal'd in rhyme
or uniformity, or abstract addresses to things, nor in melancholy
complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else,
and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of a
sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveys
itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme and
uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws, and
bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a bush,
and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges, and
melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The fluency
and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations,
are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful
blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction
in a man or woman, it is enough--the fact will prevail through the
universe; but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not
prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost.
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the
stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate
tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward
the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any
man or number of men--go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and
with the young, and with the mothers of families--re-examine all
you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss
whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great
poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the
silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your
eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
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