answer, echoes answer, dying, dying, dying.2This is a sample of the spiritual wine we have talked of—something to elevate and intoxicate. But the picture it presents does not pass away in the reaction of the morning. It haunts us in all after-life, rising up before us in the pauses of the world, to heal and refresh our wearied spirits.
As in this poem the pleasure is caused by its appeals to the imagination heightening the feeling the scene naturally excites; by the spiritual and material world being linked together as regards the music; and by the connection established between the echoes and the sky, field, hill, and river, where they die—just so it is with the poetry of moral feeling. The spectacle we have instanced of the young mother watching her sleeping infant, is in itself beautiful; but it becomes poetical when we imagine the feeling of beauty united in her mind with the instinct of love, and detect in her glance, moist with emotion, the blending of hopes, memories, pride, and tearful joy. Poetry, therefore, is not moral feeling, but something that heightens and adorns it. It is not even a direct moral agent, for it deepens the lesson only through the medium of the feelings and imagination. Thus moral poetry, when reduced to writing, is merely morality conveyed in the form of poetry; and in like manner, religious poetry, is religion so conveyed. The thing conveyed, however, must harmonise with the medium, for poetry will not consent to give an enduring form to what is false or pernicious. It has often been remarked, with a kind of superstitious wonder, that poems of an immoral character never live long; but the reason is, that it is the characteristic of immorality to tie down man in the chains of the senses, and this shews that it has nothing in common with the spiritual nature of poetry. For the same reason, a poem based upon atheism, although it might attract attention for a time, would meet with no permanent response in the human breast; religion being Truth, and poetry her peculiar ministrant.
Although written poetry, however, does not necessarily come into this subject, it may be observed, that the comparative incapacity of the present generation to enjoy the poetical is clearly exhibited in its literature. Never was there so much verse, and so little poetry. Never was the faculty of rhyming so impartially spread over the whole mass of society. The difficulty used to be, to find one possessed of the gift: now it is nearly as difficult to find one who is not. Formerly, to write verses was a distinction: now it is a distinction not to write them—and one of some consequence. But with all this multitude of poets, there is not one who can take his place with the comparatively great names of the past, or vanishing generation. Now and then we have a brilliant thought—even a certain number of verses deserving the name of a poem; but there is no sustained poetical power, nothing to mark an epoch, or glorify a name. When we commend, it is some passage distinct from the poem, something small, and finished, and complete in itself. The taste of the day runs more upon conceits and extravagances, such as Cowley would have admired, and which he might have envied. The suddenness of the impression, so to speak, made by great poets, their direct communication with the heart, belongs to another time. It is our ambition to come to the same end by feats of ingenuity; and instead of touching the feelings, and setting the imagination of the reader instantaneously aglow, to exercise his skill in unravelling and interpretation. We expect the pleasure of success to reward him for the fatigue.
The same feeling is at work, as we have already pointed out, in decorative art; in which 'a redundancy of useless or ridiculous ornament is called richness, and the inability to appreciate simple and beautiful, or grand and noble forms, receives the name of genius.' The connection is curious, likewise, between this ingenuity of poetry and that of the machinery which gives a distinguishing character to our epoch. It looks as if the complication of images, working towards a certain end, were only another development of the genius that invents those wonderful instruments which the eye cannot follow till they are familiarly entertained—and sometimes not even then. If this idea were kept in view, there would be at least some wit, although no truth, in the common theory which attempts to account for the decline of poetry. Neither advancement in science, however, nor ingenuity in mechanics, is in itself, as the theory alleges, hostile to the poetical; on the contrary, the materials of poetry multiply with the progress of both. The prosaic character of the age does not flow from these circumstances, but exists in spite of them. It has been said, indeed, that the light of knowledge is unfavourable to poetry, by making the hues and lineaments of the phantoms it calls up grow fainter and fainter, till they are wholly dispelled. But this applies only to one class of images. The ghost of Banquo, for instance, may pale away and vanish utterly before the light of knowledge; but the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth is immortal like the mind itself. Knowledge cannot throw its illumination upon eternity, or dissipate the influences by which men feel they are surrounded. A candle brought into a darkened room discloses the material forms of the things in the midst of which we are standing, and which may have been involved, to our imagination, in a poetical mystery. But the light itself, as an unexplained wonder—its analogies with the flame of life—the modifications it receives from the faint gleam of the sky through the shadowed window—all are poetical materials, and of a higher character. Where one series of materials ends, another begins; and so on in infinite progression, till poetry seems to spurn the earth from beneath her foot—
Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt,
And in clear dream and solemn vision
Telling of things which no gross ear can hear;
Till oft converse with heavenly habitants
Begins to cast a beam on the outer shape—
The unpolluted temple of the mind,
And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence,
Till all be made immortal.
Science with us, however, is a business instead of an ambition; ingenuity a trade rather than a taste. We go on from discovery to discovery, from invention to invention, with an insatiate but prosaic spirit, which turns everything to a profitable and practical account—imprisoning the very lightning, that it may carry our messages over land and under sea! We do not stop to look, to listen, to feel, to exalt with a moral elevation the objects of our study, and snatch a spiritual enjoyment from imagination. All with us is material; and all would be even mean, but for the essential grandeur of the things themselves. And here comes the question: Is this material progress incompatible with spiritual progress? Is the poetry of life less abundant because the conveniences of life are more complete and admirable? Is man less a spirit of the universe because he is a god over the elements? We answer, No: the scientific and the prosaic spirit are both independent elements in the genius of the age; or, if there is a necessary connection, it is the converse of what is supposed—the restless mind in which the fervour of poetry has died, plunging into science for the occupation that is necessary to its happiness. Thus one age is merely poetical, another merely scientific; although here, of course, we use, for the sake of distinctness, the broadest terms, unmindful of the modifications ranging between these extreme points. The age, however, that has least poetry has most science, and vice versâ.
But man, unlike the other denizens of the earth, has power over his own destiny. He is able to cultivate the poetical as if it were a plant; and if once convinced of its important bearing upon his enjoyment of the world, he will do so. The imagination may be educated as well as the moral sense, and the result of the advancement of the one as well as the other is an expansion of the mind, and an enlargement of the capacity for happiness. The grand obstacle is precisely what we have now endeavoured to aid in removing—the common mistake as to the nature of the poetical, which it is customary to consider as something remote from, or antagonistic to, the business of life. So far from this, it is essentially connected with the moral feelings. It neutralises the conventionalisms of society, and makes the whole world kin. It enlarges the circle of our sympathies, till they comprehend, not only our own kind, but every living thing, and not only animate beings, but all created nature.
A DUEL IN 1830
I had just arrived at Marseilles with the diligence, in which three young men, apparently merchants or commercial travellers, were the companions of my journey.
Tennyson.
