is who
has written so many mere "Verses of society." The lines are not only
richly ideal, but full of energy, while they breathe an earnestness--an
evident sincerity of sentiment--for which we look in vain throughout
all the other works of this author.

While the epic mania--while the idea that, to merit in poetry,
prolixity is indispensable--has, for some years past, been gradually
dying out of the public mind by mere dint of its own absurdity--we find
it succeeded by a heresy too palpably false to be long tolerated, but
one which, in the brief period it has already endured, may be said to
have accomplished more in the corruption of our Poetical Literature
than all its other enemies combined. I allude to the heresy of _The
Didactic_. It has been assumed, tacitly and avowedly, directly and
indirectly, that the ultimate object of all Poetry is Truth. Every
poem, it is said, should inculcate a moral; and by this moral is the
poetical merit of the work to be adjudged. We Americans, especially,
have patronized this happy idea; and we Bostonians, very especially,
have developed it in full. We have taken it into our heads that to
write a poem simply for the poem's sake, and to acknowledge such to
have been our design, would be to confess ourselves radically wanting
in the true Poetic dignity and force; but the simple fact is, that,
would we but permit ourselves to look into our own souls, we should
immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor
can exist any work more thoroughly dignified, more supremely noble,
than this very poem--this poem _per se_--this poem which is a poem and
nothing more--this poem written solely for the poem's sake.

With as deep a reverence for the True as ever inspired the bosom of
man, I would, nevertheless, limit in some measure its modes of
inculcation. I would limit to enforce them. I would not enfeeble them
by dissipation. The demands of Truth are severe; she has no sympathy
with the myrtles. All _that_ which is so indispensable in Song, is
precisely all _that_ with which _she_ has nothing whatever to do. It
is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and
flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than
efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must
be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood,
which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical.
He must be blind, indeed