etry; even if some shrewd Yankee should
invent a printing machine which would pick out rhymes as some printing
machines seem to pick out letters, the result would not be a poem. This
is the reason too why mere perfection of execution never really
satisfies. "She sings like a bird." Yes! and that is exactly the
difficulty with her. We want one who sings like a woman. The popular
criticism of the mere musical expert that he has no soul, is profound
and true. It is soul we want; for the piano, the organ, the violin, the
orchestra, are only instruments for the transmission of soul. This is
also the reason why the most flawless conductor is not always the best.
He must have a soul capable of reading the soul of the composer; and the
orchestra must receive the life of the composer as that is interpreted
to them through the life of the conductor, or the performance will be a
soulless performance.

Into each of these arts, therefore--music, painting, poetry--enter two
elements: the inner and the outer, the truth and the language, the
reality and the symbol, the life and the expression. Without the
electric current the carbon is a mere blank thread; the electric current
is not luminous if there be no carbon. The life and the form are alike
essential. So the painter must have something to express, but he must
also have skill to express it; the musician must have music in his soul,
but he must also have a power of instrumentation; the poet must feel the
truth, or he is no poet, but he must also have power to express what he
feels in such forms as will create a similar feeling in his readers, or
he is still no poet. Multitudes of women send to the newspapers poetical
effusions which, are not poems. The feeling of the writer is excellent,
but the expression is bad. The writer has seen, but she cannot tell what
she has seen; she has felt, but she cannot express her experience so as
to enkindle a like experience in others. These poetical utterances of
inarticulate poets are sometimes whimsical but oftener pathetic;
sometimes they are like the prattle of little children who exercise
their vocal organs before they have anything to say; but oftener they
seem to me like the beseeching eyes of a dumb animal, full of affection
and entreaty for which he has no vocal expression. It is just as
essential that poetical feeling should have poetical expression in order
to constitute poetry as it is that musical feeling should have musical
expressi