.

The 'true' poet makes his magic with the least possible ado; he and the
untrue are as the angler who is born to the angler who is made at the
tackle-shop. One encumbers the small of his back with nameless engines,
talks much of creels, hath a rod like a weaver's beam; he travels first
class to some distant show-lake among the hills, and he toils all day
as the fishermen of old toiled all night; while Tom, his gardener's son,
but a mile outside the town, with a willow wand and a bent pin, hath
caught the family supper. So is it with him who is proverbially born not
made. His friends say: 'O, you should go to such-and-such falls; you 'd
write poetry there, if you like. We all said so'; or, 'What are you
doing in here scribbling? Look through the window at the moonlight;
there's poetry for you. Go out into that if you want sonnets.' Of
course, he never takes his friends' advice; he has long known that they
know nothing whatever about it. He is probably quite ignorant of
metrical law, but one precept instinct taught him from the beginning,
and he finds it expressed one day in Wordsworth (with a blessed comfort
of assurance--like in this little, O, may be like, somehow, in the great
thing too!): 'Poetry is emotion remembered in tranquillity.' The
wandlike moments, he remembers, always came to him in haunts all remote
indeed from poetry: a sudden touch at his heart, and the air grows
rhythmical, and seems a-ripple with dreams; and, albeit, in whatever
room of dust or must he be, the song will find him, will throw her arms
about him, so it seems, will close his eyes with her sweet breath, that
he may open them upon the hidden stars.

'Impromptus' are the quackery of the poetaster. One may take it for
granted, as a general rule, that anything written 'on the spot' is
worthless. A certain young poet, who could when he liked do good things,
printed some verses, which he declared in a sub-title were 'Written on
the top of Snowdon in a thunderstorm.' He asked an opinion, and one
replied: 'Written on the top of Snowdon in a thunderstorm.' The poet was
naturally angry--and yet, what need of further criticism?

The poet, when young, although as I said, he is not likely to fall into
the foolishness of conceit which belongs to the poetaster, is yet too
apt in his zeal of dedication to talk much of his 'art,' or, at least,
think much; also to disparage life, and to pronounce much gratuitous
absolution in the name of Poetry:--

Did