n the whole," said Henry, "war seems to me poetical. People fancy
that they must fight for a possession no matter how miserable, and do
not observe that the spirit of romance excites them to annihilate all
useless baseness. They carry arms for the cause of poesy, and both
hosts follow an invisible standard."

"In war," replied Klingsohr, "the primeval fluid is stirred up. New
continents are to arise, new races to spring forth from the great
dissolution. The true war is the war of religion; its direct end is
destruction; and men's madness appears in its full dimensions. Many
wars, particularly those which originate in national hate, belong to
this class, and are real poems. Here true heroes are at home, who,
being the noblest antitypes of poesy, are but earthly powers
involuntarily penetrated by poesy. A poet, who at the same time were a
hero, would be indeed a heavenly messenger; but our poetry is not equal
to the work of representing him."

"How am I to understand that, dear father," said Henry. "Can any object
be too lofty for poesy?"

"Certainly. We cannot on the whole speak for poesy itself, but only for
her earthly means and instruments. If indeed there is for every single
poet a proper district within which he must remain, in order not to
lose all breath and vantage, then there is also for the whole sum of
human powers a determinate boundary line to the capacity for
representation; beyond which representation cannot retain the necessary
strength or form, but loses itself in an empty, delusive nonentity.
Particularly as a pupil, one cannot guard enough against these
extravagances; since a lively fancy loves too well to fly to the
extreme bounds, and arrogantly endeavors to seize upon and express the
supersensual and exuberant. Riper experience first teaches us to shun
this disproportion of objects, and to leave the investigation of what
is simplest and loftiest to worldly wisdom. The older poet rises no
higher than is needful to arrange, his vast stock in a comprehensible
order, and he is careful to omit the manifoldness, which afforded him
the requisite material, and also the necessary points of agreement. I
might almost say that in every line chaos should shine through the
well-clipped foliage of order. A graceful style merely renders the
richness of the thought more comprehensible and agreeable; regular
symmetry, on the contrary, has all the dryness of numbers. The best
poesy lies very near us, and an ordinar