We
confess that we feel a disposition commonly to concentrate
sweets, and accumulate pleasures; but the poet may be presumed
always to speak as a traveller, who leads us through a varied
scenery, from one eminence to another, and it is, perhaps, more
pleasing, after all, to meet with a fine thought in its natural
setting. Surely fate has enshrined it in these circumstances for
some end. Nature strews her nuts and flowers broadcast, and
never collects them into heaps. This was the soil it grew in,
and this the hour it bloomed in; if sun, wind, and rain came here
to cherish and expand the flower, shall not we come here to pluck
it?
A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous
expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere
which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, and are
striking as the form and bearing of a stranger; but true verses
come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath of all
friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance. Much
of our poetry has the very best manners, but no character.
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