n excess of the selfish and calculating
principle, the accumulation of the materials of external life exceed
the quantity of the power of assimilating them to the internal laws of
human nature. The body has then become too unwieldy for that which
animates it.

Poetry is indeed something divine. It is at once the center and
circumference of knowledge; it is that which comprehends all science,
and that to which all science must be referred. It is at the same time
the root and blossom of all other systems of thought; it is that from
which all spring, and that which adorns all; and that which, if
blighted, denies the fruit and the seed, and withholds from the barren
world the nourishment and the succession of the scions of the tree of
life. It is the perfect and consummate surface and bloom of all
things; it is as the odor and the color of the rose to the texture of
the elements which compose it, as the form and splendor of unfaded
beauty to the secrets of anatomy and corruption. What were virtue,
love, patriotism, friendship--what were the scenery of this beautiful
universe which we inhabit--what were our consolations on this side of
the grave--and what were our aspirations beyond it, if poetry did not
ascend to bring light and fire from those eternal regions where the
owl-winged faculty of calculation dare not ever soar?

Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the
determination of the will. A man can not say it: "I will compose
poetry." The greatest poet even can not say it; for the mind in
creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an
inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises
from within, like the color of a flower which fades and changes as it
is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are
unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this
influence be durable in its original purity and force, it is
impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when
composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the
most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is
probably a feeble shadow of the original conception of the poet. I
appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether it is not an
error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by
labor and study. The toil and the delay recommended by critics can be
justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observ