I look for ghosts, but none will force
Their way to me. 'T is falsely said
That ever there was intercourse
Between the living and the dead;
For, surely, then, I should have sight
Of him I wait for, day and night.
With love and longing infinite.

This we call Poetry, because it is invented or _made_ by the writer,
entering into the mind of a supposed person. Next, take an instance
of the actual feeling truly experienced and simply expressed by a
real person.

"Nothing surprised me more than a woman of Argentiere, whose
cottage I went into to ask for milk, as I came down from the
glacier of Argentiere, in the month of March, 1764. An epidemic
dysentery had prevailed in the village, and, a few months before,
had taken away from her, her father, her husband, and her
brothers, so that she was left alone, with three children in the
cradle. Her face had something noble in it, and its expression
bore the seal of a calm and profound sorrow. After having given me
milk, she asked me whence I came, and what I came there to do, so
early in the year. When she knew that I was of Geneva, she said to
me, 'she could not believe that all Protestants were lost souls;
that there were many honest people among us, and that God was too
good and too great to condemn all without distinction.' Then,
after a moment of reflection, she added, in shaking her head, 'But
that which is very strange is that of so many who have gone away,
none have ever returned. I,' she added, with an expression of
grief, 'who have so mourned my husband and my brothers, who have
never ceased to think of them, who every night conjure them with
beseechings to tell me where they are, and in what state they are!
Ah, surely, if they lived anywhere, they would not leave me thus!
But, perhaps,' she added, 'I am not worthy of this kindness,
perhaps the pure and innocent spirits of these children,' and she
looked at the cradle, 'may have their presence, and the joy which
is denied to _me_.'"--SAUSSURE, _Voyages dans les Alpes_, chap.
xxiv.

This we do not call Poetry, merely because it is not invented, but
the true utterance of a real person. [Ruskin.]

[41] The closing lines of Wordsworth's _Childless Father_.

[42] _Iliad_, 1. 463 ff., 2. 425 ff.; _Odyssey_, 3. 455 ff., etc.

[43] _Iliad_, 6. 468 ff.

[44] 1625-1713. Known also as Carlo delle Madonne.

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