tic parties for
President, 1872; died at Pleasantville, Westchester County, New York,
November 29, 1872.

CHAPTER III

WRITERS OF VERSE

"Poetry," says the Century dictionary, "is that one of the fine arts
which addresses itself to the feelings and the imagination by the
instrumentality of musical and moving words"; and that is probably as
concise a definition of poetry as can be evolved. For poetry is
difficult to define. Verse we can describe, because it is mechanical;
but poetry is verse with a soul added.

It is for this very reason that there is so wide a variance in the
critical estimates of the work of individual poets. The feelings and
imagination of no two persons are exactly the same, and what will appeal
to one will fail to appeal to the other; so that it follows that what is
poetry for one is merely verse for the other. Tastes vary in poetry,
just as they do in food. Indeed, poetry is a good deal like food. We all
of us like bread and butter, and we eat it every day and get good, solid
nourishment from it; but only the educated palate can appreciate the
refinements of caviar, or Gorgonzola cheese, or some rare and special
vintage. So most of us derive a mild enjoyment from the works of such
poets as Longfellow and Tennyson and Whittier; but it requires a
trained taste to appreciate the subtle delights of Browning or Edgar
Allan Poe.

Now the taste for the simple and obvious is a natural taste--the child's
taste, healthy, and, some will add, unspoiled; but poetry must be judged
by the nicer and more exacting standard, just as all other of the fine
arts must. I wonder if you have ever read what is probably the most
perfect lyric ever written by an American? I am going to set it down
here as an example of what poetry can be, and I want you to compare your
favorite poems, whatever they may be, with it. It is by Edgar Allan Poe
and is called

TO HELEN

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicaean barks of yore;
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam;
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which