contented, always, the life of life?

He is supreme poet who can make me a poet, able to reach the same
supplies after he is gone. We are bits of iron charged by this magnet,
and lose our quality when it is removed; we are not quite made magnets
as we should be by this magnetic planet and the revolutions of the sun;
yet the great polarity of our globe is a sum of little polarities, and
every scrap of metal has its own. We are made musical by the passing
band; we go on humming and marching to the air; but he who wrote it was
made musical by silence and sunshine. Soon our own vibrations will be
more easily induced, as old instruments sound with a touch or breath. We
shall throb with inarticulate rhythms, and understand the bard who
sings,--

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter."

The poet is one who has detected this latency of power in every breast.
His delight is a feeling that all doors are open to all, that he is no
favorite, but the rest are late sleepers, and he only earlier awake.
Depth of genius is measured by depth of this conviction. Egotism is
incurable greenness. An artist is one who has more, not less, respect
for the common eye. The seer points always from his own to a public
privilege,--says never, "I, Jesus, have so received," but, "The Son of
Man must so receive"; and Shakspeare cuts himself into fragments till
there is no Shakspeare left behind, as if expressly to testify that this
wonderful wisdom is not his, but ours, is not that of the thinker and
penman in his study, but of priests and kings, ladies and courtiers,
lovers and warriors, knaves and fools. Paul sees that Moses read his law
from tables of the heart. Every wise word is an echo of the wisdom
inarticulate in our neighbors which sends them confident about their