ct to him,
secondaries and servants; as sitters or models in the studio of a
painter, or as assistants who bring building materials to an architect.

For poetry was all written before time was, and whenever we are so
finely organized that we can penetrate into that region where the air
is music, we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write them down,
but we lose ever and anon a word or a verse and substitute something of
our own, and thus miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear write
down these cadences more faithfully, and these transcripts, though
imperfect, become the songs of the nations. For nature is as truly
beautiful as it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much appear
as it must be done, or be known. Words and deeds are quite indifferent
modes of the divine energy. Words are also actions, and actions are a
kind of words.

The sign and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no
man foretold. He is the true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is
the only teller of news, for he was present and privy to the appearance
which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the
necessary and causal. For we do not speak now of men of poetical
talents, or of industry and skill in metre, but of the true poet. I
took part in a conversation the other day concerning a recent writer of
lyrics, a man of subtle mind, whose head appeared to be a music-box of
delicate tunes and rhythms, and whose skill and command of language, we
could not sufficiently praise. But when the question arose whether he
was not only a lyrist but a poet, we were obliged to confess that he is
plainly a contemporary, not an eternal man. He does not stand out of our
low limitations, like a Chimborazo under the line, running up from the
torrid Base through all the climates of the globe, with belts of the
herbage of every latitude on its high and mottled sides; but this genius
is the landscape-garden of a modern house, adorned with fountains and
statues, with well-bred men and women standing and sitting in the walks
and terraces. We hear, through all the varied music, the ground-tone of
conventional life. Our poets are men of talents who sing, and not the
children of music. The argument is secondary, the finish of the verses
is primary.

For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,--a
thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an
animal it has an arch