It is at once a consequence and
      an indication of his perennial existence. It is the desire of the moth for
      the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty before us, but a wild
      effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of
      the glories beyond the grave, we struggle by multiform combinations among
      the things and thoughts of Time to attain a portion of that Loveliness
      whose very elements perhaps appertain to eternity alone. And thus when by
      Poetry, or when by Music, the most entrancing of the poetic moods, we find
      ourselves melted into tears, we weep then, not as the Abbate Gravina
      supposes, through excess of pleasure, but through a certain petulant,
      impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at
      once and for ever, those divine and rapturous joys of which _through’
      _the poem, or _through _the music, we attain to but brief and
      indeterminate glimpses. The struggle to apprehend the supernal Loveliness—this struggle, on
      the part of souls fittingly constituted—has given to the world all
      _that _which it (the world) has ever been enabled at once to
      understand and _to feel _as poetic. The Poetic Sentiment, of course, may develop itself in various modes—in
      Painting, in Sculpture, in Architecture, in the Dance—very
      especially in Music—and very peculiarly, and with a wide field, in
      the com position of the Landscape Garden. Our present theme, however, has
      regard only to its manifestation in words. And here let me speak briefly
      on the topic of rhythm. Contenting myself with the certainty that Music,
      in its various modes of metre, rhythm, and rhyme, is of so vast a moment
      in Poetry as never to be wisely rejected—is so vitally important an
      adjunct, that he is simply silly who declines its assistance, I will not
      now pause to maintain its absolute essentiality. It is in Music perhaps
      that the soul most nearly attains the great end for which, when inspired
      by the Poetic Sentiment, it struggles—the creation of supernal
      Beauty. It _may _be, indeed, that here this sublime end is, now and
      then, attained in _fact. _We are often made to feel, with a shivering
      delight, that from an earthly harp are stricken notes which _cannot _have
      been unfamiliar to the angels. And thus there can be little doubt that in
      the union of Poetry with Music in its popular sense, we shall find the
      widest field for the Poetic development. The old Bards and Minnesingers
      had advantages which we do not possess—and Thomas Moore, singing his
      own songs, was, in the most legitimate manner, perfecting them as poems. To recapitulate then:—I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words
      as _The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty. _Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience it has only collateral
      relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever either with
      Duty or with Truth. A few words, however, in explanation. _That _pleasure which is at
      once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived,
      I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation
      of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation,
      or excitement _of the soul, _which we recognize as the Poetic
      Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the
      satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of
      the heart. I make Beauty, therefore—using the word as inclusive of
      the sublime—I make Beauty the province of the poem, simply because
      it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to spring as
      directly as possible from their causes:—no one as yet having been
      weak enough to deny that the peculiar elevation in question is at least _most
      readily _attainable in the poem. It by no means follows, however, that
      the incitements of Passion’ or the precepts of Duty, or even the lessons
      of Truth, may not be introduced into a poem, and with advantage; for they
      may subserve incidentally, in various ways, the general purposes of the
      work: but the true artist will always contrive to tone them down in proper
      subjection to that _Beauty _which is the atmosphere and the real
      essence of the poem. I cannot better introduce the few poems which I shall present for your
      consideration, than by the citation of the Proem to Longfellow’s “Waif”:—

     The day is done, and the darkness
         Falls from the wings of Night,
     As a feather is wafted downward
         From an Eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village
         Gleam through the rain and the mist,
     And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me,
         That my soul cannot resist;
     A feeling of sadness and longing,
         That is not akin to pain,
     And resembles sorrow only
         As the mist resembles the rain. Come, read to me some poem,
         Some simple and heartfelt lay,
     That shall soothe this restless feeling,
         And banish the thoughts of day. Not from the grand old masters,
         Not from the bards sublime,
     Whose distant footsteps echo
         Through the corridors of Time. For, like strains of martial music,
         Their mighty thoughts suggest
     Life’s endless toil and endeavor;
         And to-night I long for rest. Read from some humbler poet,
         Whose songs gushed from his heart,
     As showers from the clouds of summer,
         Or tears from the eyelids start;
     Who through long days of labor,
         And nights devoid of ease,
     Still heard in his soul the music
         Of wonderful melodies. Such songs have power to quiet
         The restless pulse of care,
     And come like the benediction
         That follows after prayer. Then read from the treasured volume
         The poem of thy choice,
     And lend to the rhyme of the poet
         The beauty of thy voice. And the night shall be filled with music,
         And the cares that infest the day
     Shall fold their tents like the Arabs,
         And as silently steal away. With no great range of imagination, these lines have been justly admired
      for their delicacy of expression. Some of the images are very effective. Nothing can be better than—

    ———————the bards sublime,
         Whose distant footsteps echo
     Down the corridors of Time. The idea of the last quatrain is also very effective. The poem on the
      whole, however, is chiefly to be admired for the graceful _insouciance
      _of its metre, so well in accordance with the character of the
      sentiments, and especially for the _ease _of the general manner.