Moreover:

"That system gave us the story of a superior and celestial race of
beings, to whom human passions were attributed, and who were, like
ourselves, susceptible of suffering; but it elevated them so far above
the creatures of earth in power, in knowledge, and in security from
the calamities of our condition, that they could be the subjects of
little sympathy. Therefore it is that the mythological poetry of
the ancients is as cold as it is beautiful, as unaffecting as it is
faultless....

"The admirers of poetry, then, may give up the ancient mythology
without a sigh. Its departure has left us what is better than all
it has taken away: it has left us men and women; it has left us the
creatures and things of God's universe, to the simple charm of which
the cold splendor of that system blinded men's eyes, and to the
magnificence of which the rapid progress of science is every day
adding new wonders and glories. It has left us, also, a more sublime
and affecting religion, whose truths are broader, higher, nobler than
any outlook to which its random conjectures ever attained."

Yet, after all, returning from this consideration of poetic themes
to the question of the poetic principle itself; we may find a sturdy
assertion of it in a few words by Edgar Allan Poe--perhaps the most
acute of the many debaters of this apparently simple yet evasive
problem. After discussing the elements of poetry in music, painting,
and other art, Poe writes:

"I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical
Creation of Beauty! Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect,
or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless
incidentally, it has no concern whatever with Duty or with Truth....

"In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain
that pleasurable elevation, or excitement of the soul, which
we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily
distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason,
or from Passion, which is excitement of the Heart. I make Beauty,
therefore--using the word as inclusive of the sublime--I make Beauty
the province of the poem....

"It by no means follows, however, that the incitements of Passion,
or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons of Truth, may not be
introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they may subserve
incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the work:--but
the true artist will always contr