Think of Byron, Burns,
Shelley, Keats, (even first-raters, "the brothers of the radiant
summit," as William O'Connor calls them,) as having done only their
precursory and 'prentice work, and all their best and real poems being
left yet unwrought, untouch'd. Is it difficult to imagine ahead of
us and them, evolv'd from them, poesy completer far than any they
themselves fulfill'd? One has in his eye and mind some very large,
very old, entirely sound and vital tree or vine, like certain hardy,
ever-fruitful specimens in California and Canada, or down in
Mexico, (and indeed in all lands) beyond the chronological
records--illustrations of growth, continuity, power, amplitude
and _exploitation_, almost beyond statement, but proving fact and
possibility, outside of argument.
Perhaps, indeed, the rarest and most blessed quality of transcendent
noble poetry--as of law, and of the profoundest wisdom and
estheticism--is, (I would suggest,) from sane, completed, vital,
capable old age.
The final proof of song or personality is a sort of matured, accreted,
superb, evoluted, almost divine, impalpable diffuseness and atmosphere
or invisible magnetism, dissolving and embracing all--and not any
special achievement of passion, pride, metrical form, epigram,
plot, thought, or what is call'd beauty. The bud of the rose or the
half-blown flower is beautiful, of course, but only the perfected
bloom or apple or finish'd wheat-head is beyond the rest. Completed
fruitage like this comes (in my opinion) to a grand age, in man
or woman, through an essentially sound continuated physiology and
psychology (both important) and is the culminating glorious aureole of
all and several preceding.
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