how it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with
milkmaids--_totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;_ when he can
reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and,
rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so
vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood,
against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's
ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has
lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet--a "Maker." By that
name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser
one.

* * * * *

I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and
from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry:
between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the
formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged,"
when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by
nature it aims to do. My sole intent has been to clarify that notion,
which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as
a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a
member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says:
"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs
yearly; but _solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur_"--these two
only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"--that
is to say, creates--which is a part of the divine function; and he
makes--using man's highest instruments, thought and speech--harmonious
inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament
fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. _"Non c'e' in mondo,_"
said Torquato Tasso proudly, _"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio
ed il Poeta"_--"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the
Poet."

THE END

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