Mates around us, like the
cock, and delighting in the dust we make, but do not detect where
the jewel lies, which, perhaps, we have in the mean time cast to
a distance, or quite covered up again.
The poet's body even is not fed like other men's, but he sometimes
tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia of the gods, and lives a
divine life. By the healthful and invigorating thrills of
inspiration his life is preserved to a serene old age.
Some poems are for holidays only. They are polished and sweet,
but it is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil gives to
sour bread. The breath with which the poet utters his verse must
be that by which he lives.
Great prose, of equal elevation, commands our respect more than
great verse, since it implies a more permanent and level height,
a life more pervaded with the grandeur of the thought. The poet
often only makes an irruption, like a Parthian, and is off again,
shooting while he retreats; but the prose writer has conquered
like a Roman, and settled colonies.
The true poem is not that which the public read. There is always
a poem not printed on paper, coincident with the production of
this, stereotyped in the poet's life.
