s not moralize or make applications of morals ... he
knows the soul. The soul has that measureless pride which consists in
never acknowledging any lessons but its own. But it has sympathy as
measureless as its pride and the one balances the other and neither
can stretch too far while it stretches in company with the other. The
inmost secrets of art sleep with the twain. The greatest poet has lain
close betwixt both and they are vital in his style and thoughts.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the
light of letters is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity ...
nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To
carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give
all subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very
uncommon. But to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and
insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of
the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the
flawless triumph of art. If you have looked on him who has achieved
it you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations
and times. You shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull
over the bay or the mettlesome action of the blood horse or the tall
leaning of sunflowers on their stalk or the appearance of the sun
journeying through heaven or the appearance of the moon afterward with
any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatest
poet has less a marked style and is more the channel of thoughts
and things without increase or diminution and is the free channel of
himself. He swears to his art, I will not be meddlesome, I will not
have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in
the way between me and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing
hang in the way not the richest curtains. What I tell I tell for
precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or
soothe I will have purposes as health or heat or snow has and be as
regardless of observation. What I experience or portray shall go from
my composition without a shred of my composition. You shall stand by
my side and look in the mirror with me.

The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be
proved by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease
through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits
him not. Of the traits of the brotherhood of writers savans