walking on tip-toe with
their tails down, till finally they go to roost in some obscure corner,
and are no more seen among bipeds.

Among those, however, who have been unfortunately beguiled by the spirit
of imitation and sympathy into religious poetry, one or two--who for the
present must be nameless--have shown feeling; and would they but obey
their feeling, and prefer walking on the ground with their own free
feet, to attempting to fly in the air with borrowed and bound wings,
they might produce something really poetical, and acquire a creditable
reputation. But they are too aspiring; and have taken into their hands
the sacred lyre without due preparation. He who is so familiar with his
Bible, that each chapter, open it where he will, teems with household
words, may draw thence the theme of many a pleasant and pathetic song.
For is not all human nature and all human life shadowed forth in those
pages? But the heart, to sing well from the Bible, must be imbued with
religious feelings, as a flower is alternately with dew and sunshine.
The study of THE BOOK must have been begun in the simplicity of
childhood, when it was felt to be indeed divine--and carried on through
all those silent intervals in which the soul of manhood is restored,
during the din of life, to the purity and peace of its early being. The
Bible must be to such a poet even as the sky--with its sun, moon, and
stars--its boundless blue with all its cloud-mysteries--its peace deeper
than the grave, because of realms beyond the grave--its tumult louder
than that of life, because heard altogether in all the elements. He who
begins the study of the Bible late in life, must, indeed, devote himself
to it--night and day--and with a humble and a contrite heart as well as
an awakened and soaring spirit, ere he can hope to feel what he
understands, or to understand what he feels--thoughts and feelings
breathing in upon him, as if from a region hanging, in its mystery,
between heaven and earth. Nor do we think that he will lightly venture
on the composition of poetry drawn from such a source. The very thought
of doing so, were it to occur to his mind, would seem irreverent; it
would convince him that he was still the slave of vanity, and pride, and
the world.

They alone, therefore, to whom God has given genius as well as faith,
zeal, and benevolence--will, of their own accord, fix their Pindus
either on Lebanon or Calvary--and of these but few. The genius must b