is in the veracity of its report. Talent may frolic and
juggle; genius realizes and adds. Mankind in good
earnest have availed so far in understanding themselves
and their work, that the foremost watchman on the peak
announces his news. It is the truest word ever spoken,
and the phrase will be the fittest, most musical, and
the unerring voice of the world for that time.

All that we call sacred history attests that the
birth of a poet is the principal event in chronology.
Man, never so often deceived, still watches for the
arrival of a brother who can hold him steady to a
truth until he has made it his own. With what joy I
begin to read a poem which I confide in as an
inspiration! And now my chains are to be broken; I
shall mount above these clouds and opaque airs in
which I live,--opaque, though they seem transparent,
--and from the heaven of truth I shall see and
comprehend my relations. That will reconcile me to
life and renovate nature, to see trifles animated
by a tendency, and to know what I am doing. Life will
no more be a noise; now I shall see men and women,
and know the signs by which they may be discerned
from fools and satans. This day shall be better than
my birthday: then I became an animal; now I am
invited into the science of the real. Such is the
hope, but the fruition is postponed. Oftener it falls
that this winged man, who will carry me into the heaven,
whirls me into mists, then leaps and frisks about with
me as it were from cloud to cloud, still affirming that