y matter is not seldom the
object of its most tender love. With the poet, poetry is confined to
limited instruments, and just so far becomes an art. Language
especially has its fixed sphere. The compass of one's native tongue is
yet narrower. By practice and reflection the poet learns to understand
his own language. He knows exactly what he can accomplish by its aid,
and will make no fruitless attempt to strain it beyond its powers.
Seldom will he collect all its powers upon a single point; for
otherwise he becomes wearisome, and even destroys the rich effect of a
well applied exhibition of its strength. No poet, but a quack, aims at
wonderful efforts."[See Note III.]

"Poets on the whole cannot learn too much from musicians and painters.
In these arts it is very striking, how necessary it is to take sparing
advantage of the auxiliary means of the art, and how much depends upon
proper relations. Those artists, on the contrary, can certainty accept
from us the poetic independence, and the inner spirit of each
composition and invention; particularly of every genuine work. The
execution, not the material, is the object of the art. They should be
more poetical, we more musical and graphic; yet both according to the
manner and method of our art. You yourself will soon see in what songs
you can best succeed; they will certainly be those, the subjects of
which are easiest and nearest at hand. Therefore it can be said that
poetry rests entirely upon experience. I know that in my younger days
an object could hardly seem too distant and too unknown, for such I
delighted most to sing. What was the result? An empty, meagre flash of
words, without a spark of true poetry. Thence the tale[3] is the most
difficult of tasks, and a young poet will seldom perform it correctly."

"I should like to hear one of yours," said Henry. "The few I have
heard, though insignificant, have delighted me exceedingly."

"I will satisfy your wish this evening. I remember one which I composed
when quite young, which is sufficiently evident still; yet it will
entertain you the more instructively, for it will recall much that I
have told you."

"Language," said Henry, "is indeed a little world in signs and sounds.
As man rules over it, so would he rule the great world, and in it
express himself freely. And in this very joy of expressing in the world
what is without it, and of doing that which in reality was the primal
object of our existence, lies the