If you have look'd on him who has achiev'd it
you have look'd on one of the masters of the artists of all nations
and times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull over
the bay, or the mettlesome action of the blood horse, or the tall
leaning of sunflowers on their stalk, or the appearance of the sun
journeying through heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward,
with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The great
poet has less a mark'd style, and is more the channel of thoughts and
things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of
himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not
have in my writing any elegance, or effect, or originality, to hang
in the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing
hang in the way, not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for
precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or
soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has, and be as
regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from
my composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by
my side and look in the mirror with me.
The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be
proved by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease
through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits
him not. Of the traits of the brotherhood of first-class writers,
savans, musicians, inventors and artists, nothing is finer than
silent defiance advancing from new free forms.
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