--were largely operative with the old poets, and I believe are
necessary to any eminent success in this field; but they seem nearly to
have died out of the modern mind, like organs there is no longer any
use for. The poetic temperament has not yet adjusted itself to the new
lights, to science, and to the vast fields and expanses opened up in
the physical cosmos by astronomy and geology, and in the spiritual or
intellectual world by the great German metaphysicians. The staple of
a large share of our poetic literature is yet mainly the result of the
long age of fable and myth that now lies behind us. "Leaves of Grass"
is, perhaps, the first serious and large attempt at an expression in
poetry of a knowledge of the earth as one of the orbs, and of man as
a microcosm of the whole, and to give to the imagination these new and
true fields of wonder and romance. In it fable and superstition are at
an end, priestcraft is at an end, skepticism and doubt are at an end,
with all the misgivings and dark forebodings that have dogged the human
mind since it began to relax its hold upon tradition and the past; and
we behold man reconciled, happy, ecstatic, full of reverence, awe, and
wonder, reinstated in Paradise,--the paradise of perfect knowledge and
unrestricted faith.

It needs but a little pondering to see that the great poet of the future
will not be afraid of science, but will rather seek to plant his feet
upon it as upon a rock. He knows that, from an enlarged point of view,
there is no feud between Science and Poesy, any more than there is
between Science and Religion, or between Science and Life. He sees that
the poet and the scientist do not travel opposite but parallel roads,
that often approach each other very closely, if they do not at times
actually join. The poet will always pause when he finds himself in
opposition to science; and the scientist is never more worthy the name
than when he escapes from analysis into synthesis, and gives us living
wholes. And science, in its present bold and receptive mood, may be said
to be eminently creative, and to have made every first-class thinker and
every large worker in any aesthetic or spiritual field immeasurably
its debtor. It has dispelled many illusions, but it has more than
compensated the imagination by the unbounded vistas it has opened up
on every hand. It has added to our knowledge, but it has added to our
ignorance in the same measure: the large circle of light only re