HE Poet's pen is the true divining rod
Which trembles towards the inner founts of feeling; Bringing to light and use, else hid from all,
The many sweet, clear sources which we have Of good and beauty in our own deep bosoms:
And marks the variations of all mind
THE world is full of Poetry-the air Is living with its spirit; and the waves Dance to the music of its melodies,
And sparkles in its brightness. Earth is veiled
And mantled with its beauty; and the walls, That close the universe with crystal in,
Are eloquent with voices that proclaim The unseen glories of immensity, In harmonies, too perfect, and too high, For aught but beings of celestial mould, And speak to man in one eternal hymn, Unfading beauty and unyielding power.
Blending the grand, the beautiful, the gay, The mournful, and the tender, in one strain, Which steals into the heart, like sounds that rise Far off in moonlight evenings, on the shore
Of the wide ocean resting after storms;
Or tones, that wind around the vaulted roof, And pointed arches, and retiring aisles Of some old, lonely minster, where the hand, Skilful, and moved with passionate love of art, Plays o'er the higher keys, and bears aloft The peal of bursting thunder, and then calls, By mellow touches, from the softer tubes, Voices of melting tenderness, that blend With pure and gentle musings, till the soul, Commingling with the melody, is borne, Rapt and dissolved in ecstacy, to heaven.
'Tis not the chime and flow of words, that move
In measured file and metrical array ; 'Tis not the union of returning sounds, Nor all the pleasing artifice of rhyme, And quantity, and accent, that can give This all-pervading spirit to the ear,
Or blend it with the movings of the soul. 'Tis a mysterious feeling, which combines Man with the world around him in a chain Woven of flowers, and dipped in sweetness, till He tastes the high communion of his thoughts With all existences, in earth and heaven, That meet him in the charm of grace and "Tis not the noisy babbler, who displays,
In studied phrase, and ornate epithet,
And rounded period, poor and vapid thoughts, Which peep from out the cumbrous ornaments That overload their littleness. Its words
Are few, but deep and solemn; and they break Fresh from the fount of feeling, and are full
Of all that passion which, on Carinel, fired
The holy prophet, when his lips were coal, His language winged with terror, as when bolts Leap from the brooding tempest, armed with wrath. Commissioned to affright us and destroy.
HERE shalt thou hear and learn
Of harmony, in tones and numbers hit
By voice or hand; and various-measured verse, Eolian charms, and Dorian lyric odes,
And his who gave them breath, but higher sung,
Blind Melesigenes, thence Homer called,
Whose poem Phoebus challenged for his own : Thence what the lofty, grave tragedians taught In chorus or Iambic, teachers best Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief, sententious precepts, while they treat Of fate and chance, and change in human life.
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