nkindles the same kind of joyful exaltation. There is current a
detestable phrase or definition, which even Coleridge allows himself
to countenance, namely, that poetry is something which gives pleasure.
Pleasure! Do we speak of the pleasure of beholding the sun rise out of
the Atlantic or from the top of Mount Washington, or the pleasure of
standing beside Niagara, or of reading about the self-sacrifice of
Regulus or Winkelried? Pleasure is a word limited to the animal or to
the lighter feelings. "Let me have the pleasure of taking wine
with you." A good dinner gives great pleasure to a circle of gourmets.
Even enjoyment, a higher word than pleasure, should, when applied to
poetry, be conjoined with some elevating qualification; for all the
feelings impart enjoyment through their simple healthy function, and
there are people who enjoy a cock-pit, or a bull-fight, or an
execution. But poetry causes that refined, super-sensuous delight
which follows the apprehension of any thought, sentiment, act, or
scene, which rises towards the best and purest possible in the range
of that thought, sentiment, act, or scene. In the poetical there
always is exaltation, a reaching towards perfection, a subtle,
blooming spirituality. The end of poetry is not pleasure,--this were
to speak too grossly,--but refined enjoyment through emotion.

To him who has the finer sensibility to become aware of its presence,
the poetical is everywhere. The beautiful is a kiss which man gives to
Nature, who returns it; to get the kiss from her he must first give
it. Wordsworth says, "Poetry is the breath and fine spirit of all
knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the
countenance of all science." It might be called the aromatic
essence of all life.

A poem is the incarnation of this aroma, the condensation of it into
form. A drop of dew symbolizes a poem; for a true poem should be oval,
without angles, transparent, compact, complete in itself, graceful
from inward quality and fullness. It may be of a few lines, or of
hundreds or thousands; but there must be no superfluous line or word.
A poem drops out of the brain a fragrant distillation. A poem must be
a spiritual whole; that is, not only with the parts organized into
proportioned unity, but with the whole and the parts springing out of
the idea, the sentiment, form obedient to substance, body to soul, the
sensuous life to the inward. For enduring, ruddy incarnation, the
subject, whe