That make ingrateful man!"

I know of no other single passage that exhibits so clearly the
colossal dimensions of Shakespeare. Here is attained, with almost
unique effect, what according to Schiller is the aim of poetry, "no
other than to give to humanity its fullest possible expression, its
most complete utterance."

The best poetry, like the best music, soars towards the upper light.
The genuinely poetical always lifts up the thought on the swell of
emotion. The thought moves free and strong because there is a deep,
bubbling head of feeling behind it. Feeling, at its best, has an
ascending movement, reaching up towards that high sphere where,
through their conjunction, the earthly and the spiritual play in
freedom in the sunshine of the beautiful. The surest test of the
presence of poetry is buoyancy, springiness, which comes from the
union, the divine union, of the spiritual and the beautiful. However
weighty it may be with thought, the poetical passage floats,
thus giving certain sign of life, of a soul irrepressible.

But as in the forest there cannot be height of stem without strength
and breadth of root, the highest poetry is the most solid, the firmest
set in reality, in truth. The higher a poet is, the closer hold he has
of the roots of his subject. He looks at it with a peering, deeply
sympathetic insight. The roots, in fact, are in himself; they are in
the depths of his soul. Hence a cardinal question about a poem is, How
much of it does the poet draw out of himself? Is it his by projection
from his inward resources, by injection with his own juices; or is it
his only by adoption and adaptation, by dress and adjustment?