and its glistening counterpart. In the best poetry there is vivid
picture-making: reality is made more visible by being presented as a
beautiful show. It is the power to present the beautiful show which
constitutes the poet. To conceive a scene or person with such
liveliness and compactness as to be able to transfer the conception to
paper with a distinctness and palpitation that shall make the reader
behold in it a fresh and buoyant type of the actual--this implies a
subtle, creative life in the mind, this is the test of poetic
faculty. To stand this test there must be an inward sea of thought and
sensibility, dipping into which the poet is enabled to hold up his
conception or invention all adrip with sparkling freshness. The poetic
mind, with a firm, and at the same time free, easy hold, holds a
subject at arm's length, where it can be turned round in the light;
the prosaic mind grasps and hugs what it handles so close that there
is no room for play of light or motion.

Contemplating synthetically the highest and choicest and purest, and
at the same time actively endeavoring to embody it, the genuine poet
has in his best work joy as exalted as the mind can here attain to;
and in the reader who can attune himself to the high pitch, he
enkindles the same kind of joyful exaltation. There is current a
detestable phrase or definition, which even Coleridge allows himself
to countenance, namely, that poetry is something which gives pleasure.
Pleasure! Do we speak of the pleasure of beholding the sun rise out of
the Atlantic or from the top of Mount Washington, or the pleasure of
standing beside Niagara, or of reading about the self-sacrifice of
Regulus or Winkelried? Pleasure is a word limited to the animal or to
the lighter feelings. "Let me have the pleasure of taking wine
with you." A good dinner gives great pleasure to a circle of gourmets.
Even enjoyment, a higher word than pleasure, should, when applied to