It embodies and illustrates its impressions by imagination, or images
of the objects of which it treats, and other images brought in to
throw light on those objects, in order that it may enjoy and impart
the feeling of their truth in its utmost conviction and affluence.

It illustrates them by fancy, which is a lighter play of imagination,
or the feeling of analogy coming short of seriousness, in order that
it may laugh with what it loves, and show how it can decorate it with
fairy ornament.

It modulates what it utters, because in running the whole round of
beauty it must needs include beauty of sound; and because, in the
height of its enjoyment, it must show the perfection of its triumph,
and make difficulty itself become part of its facility and joy.

And lastly, Poetry shapes this modulation into uniformity for its
outline, and variety for its parts, because it thus realizes the last
idea of beauty itself, which includes the charm of diversity within
the flowing round of habit and ease.

Poetry is imaginative passion. The quickest and subtlest test of the
possession of its essence is in expression; the variety of things to
be expressed shows the amount of its resources; and the continuity of
the song completes the evidence of its strength and greatness. He who
has thought, feeling, expression, imagination, action, character, and
continuity, all in the largest amount and highest degree, is the
greatest poet.

Poetry includes whatsoever of painting can be made visible to the
mind's eye, and whatsoever of music can be conveyed by sound and
proportion without singing or instrumentation. But it far surpasses
those divine arts in suggestiveness, range, and intellectual
wealth;--the first, in expression of thought, combination of images,
and the triumph over space and time; the second, in all that can be
done by speech, apart from the tones and modulations of pure sound.
Painting and music, however, include all those portions of the gift of
poetry that can be expressed and heightened by the visible and
melodious. Painting, in a certain apparent manner, is things
themselves; music, in a certain audible manner, is their very emotion
and grace. Music and painting are proud to be related to poetry, and
poetry loves and is proud of them.

Poetry begins where matter of fact or of science ceases to be merely
such, and to exhibit a further truth; that is to say, the connexion it
has with the world of emotion, and its powe