picture. Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone
of the continent consists of infinite masses of the
shells of animalcules, so language is made up of
images or tropes, which now, in their secondary use,
have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.
But the poet names the thing because he sees it, or
comes one step nearer to it than any other. This
expression or naming is not art, but a second nature,
grown out of the first, as a leaf out of a tree. What
we call nature is a certain self-regulated motion or
change; and nature does all things by her own hands,
and does not leave another to baptize her but baptizes
herself; and this through the metamorphosis again. I
remember that a certain poet described it to me thus:

Genius is the activity which repairs the decays
of things, whether wholly or partly of a material
and finite kind. Nature, through all her kingdoms,
insures herself. Nobody cares for planting the
poor fungus; so she shakes down from the gills of
one agaric countless spores, any one of which,
being preserved, transmits new billions of spores
to-morrow or next day. The new agaric of this hour
has a chance which the old one had not. This atom
of seed is thrown into a new place, not subject to
the accidents which destroyed its parent two rods
off. She makes a man; and having brought him to
ripe age, she will no longer run the risk of losing
this wonder at a blow, but she detaches from him a
new self, that the kind may be safe from accidents