He says to the past, Rise and walk
before me that I may realize you. He learns the lesson--he places
himself where the future becomes present. The greatest poet does
not only dazzle his rays over character and scenes and passions--he
finally ascends, and finishes all--he exhibits the pinnacles that no
man can tell what they are for, or what is beyond--he glows a moment
on the extremest verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden
smile or frown; by that flash of the moment of parting the one that
sees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. The
greatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals--he
knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists in
never acknowledging any lessons or deductions but its own. But it has
sympathy as measureless as its pride, and the one balances the other,
and neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company with the
other. The inmost secrets of art sleep with the twain. The greatest
poet has lain close betwixt both, and they are vital in his style and
thoughts.
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light
of letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity--nothing
can make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carry
on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all
subjects their articulations, are powers neither common nor very
uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and
insouciance of the movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of
the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the
flawless triumph of art.
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