The workers in stone polish only their chimney
ornaments, but their pyramids are roughly done. There is a
soberness in a rough aspect, as of unhewn granite, which
addresses a depth in us, but a polished surface hits only the
ball of the eye. The true finish is the work of time, and the
use to which a thing is put. The elements are still polishing
the pyramids. Art may varnish and gild, but it can do no more.
A work of genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it
anticipates the lapse of time, and has an ingrained polish, which
still appears when fragments are broken off, an essential quality
of its substance. Its beauty is at the same time its strength,
and it breaks with a lustre.
The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well as its
essence. The reader easily goes within the shallowest
contemporary poetry, and informs it with all the life and promise
of the day, as the pilgrim goes within the temple, and hears the
faintest strains of the worshippers; but it will have to speak to
posterity, traversing these deserts, through the ruins of its
outmost walls, by the grandeur and beauty of its proportions.
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