Agamemnon's victories are to Agamemnon. The poet does
not wait for the hero or the sage, but, as they act and
think primarily, so he writes primarily what will and
must be spoken, reckoning the others, though primaries
also, yet, in respect to him, secondaries and servants;
as sitters or models in the studio of a painter, or as
assistants who bring building materials to an architect.

For poetry was all written before time was, and
whenever we are so finely organized that we can
penetrate into that region where the air is music,
we hear those primal warblings and attempt to write
them down, but we lose ever and anon a word or a
verse and substitute something of our own, and thus
miswrite the poem. The men of more delicate ear
write down these cadences more faithfully, and
these transcripts, though imperfect, become the songs
of the nations. For nature is as truly beautiful as
it is good, or as it is reasonable, and must as much
appear as it must be done, or be known. Words and
deeds are quite indifferent modes of the divine energy.
Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

The sign and credentials of the poet are that he
announces that which no man foretold. He is the
true and only doctor; he knows and tells; he is
the only teller of news, for he was present and
privy to the appearance which he describes. He is
a beholder of ideas and an utterer of the necessary
and causal. For we do not speak now of men of