Merely to embody in
verse the feelings, thoughts, deeds, scenes of human life, is not the
poet's office; but to exhibit these as having attained, or as capable
of attaining, the power and beauty and spirituality possible to each.
The glorifier of humanity the poet is, not its mere reporter; that is
the historian's function. The poet's business is not with facts as
such, or with inferences, but with truth of feeling, and the very
spirit of truth. His function is ideal; that is, from the prosaic, the
individual, the limited, he is to lift us up to the universal, the
generic, the boundless. In compassing this noble end he may, if such
be his bent, use the facts and feelings and individualities of daily
life; and, by illuminating and ennobling them he will approve his
human insight, as well as his poetic gift.
The generic in sentiment, the universal, the infinite, can only be
reached and recognized through the higher feelings, through those
whose activity causes emotion. The simple impulses, the elementary
loves, are in themselves bounded in their action near and direct; but
growing round the very fountain of life, having their roots
in the core of being, they are liable to strike beyond their
individual limits, and this they do with power when under their sway
the whole being is roused and expanded.
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