But this repetition is not Poesy. He who shall merely sing with
whatever rapture, in however harmonious strains, or with however vivid
a truth of imitation, of the sights and sounds which greet him in
common with all mankind- he, we say, has yet failed to prove his
divine title. There is still a longing unsatisfied, which he has
been impotent to fulfil. There is still a thirst unquenchable, which
to allay he has shown us no crystal springs. This burning thirst
belongs to the immortal essence of man's nature. It is equally a
consequence and an indication of his perennial life. It is the
desire of the moth for the star. It is not the mere appreciation of
the beauty before us. It is a wild effort to reach the beauty above.
It is a forethought of the loveliness to come. It is a passion to be
satiated by no sublunary sights, or sounds, or sentiments, and the
soul thus athirst strives to allay its fever in futile efforts at
creation. Inspired with a prescient ecstasy of the beauty beyond the
grave, it struggles by multiform novelty of combination among the
things and thoughts of Time, to anticipate some portion of that
loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain solely to Eternity,
and the result of such effort, on the part of souls fittingly
constituted, is alone what mankind have agreed to denominate Poetry.
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