startled with the electric life which burns within their words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Ode to the Poets. BARDS KEATS This poem was written by Keats on the blank page of Beaumont and Fletcher's "Fair Maid of the Inn." It was first published in the "Lamia" volume of 1820. ARDS of Passion and of Mirth, Browsed by none but Dian's fawns; Tales and golden histories I (Second conversation between Southey and Porson: Porson loquitur.) HATE both poetry and wine without body. Look at Shakespeare, Bacon, and Milton; were these your pure-imagination men?.... Did the two of them who wrote in verse build upon nothing? Did their predecessors? And, pray, whose daughter was the muse they invoked? Why, Memory's. They stood among substantial men, and sang upon recorded actions. The plain of Scamander, the promontory of Sigoum, the palaces of Tros and Dardanus, the citadel in which the Fates sang mournfully under the image of Minerva, seem fitter places for the Muses to alight on, than artificial rockwork, or than faery-rings. |