have within its core this essential aroma. The poet (and the test of
his poetic capacity is his gift to draw the fragrance out of such a
core) keeps his conception distinctly and vividly before him. The
conception or ideal prefigurement of his theme precedes him, like the
pillar of fire in the night, drawing him onward surely and rapidly.
Otherwise he lags and flags and stumbles. The spring into poetry is on
a flash, which not only lights up the thought on which it springs, but
renews, recreates it.

A man's chief aim in life should be to better himself, to keep
bettering himself; and in this high duty the poet helps him. Poetry is
the great educator of the feelings. By seizing and holding up to view
the noblest and cleanest and best there is in human life, poetry
elevates and refines the feelings. It reveals and strengthens the
spirituality of our nature. Poetry tunes the mind. Faculty of
admiration is one of our super-animal privileges. Poetry purges and
guides admiration; and the sounder and higher our admirations, the
more admirable ourselves become.

The best poetry turns the mind inward upon itself, and sweetens its
imaginations. Our imaginations, that is, our inward thoughts, plans,
shaping our silent, interior doings, these are the chief part of us;
for out of these come most of our outward acts, and all of their
color. As is the preponderance of the man, will be this inward brood.
The timid man will imagine dangers, the anxious man troubles, the
hopeful man successes, the avaricious man accumulations, the ambitious
possession of power; and the poetic man will imagine all sorts
of perfections, be ever yearning for a better and higher, be ever
building beautiful air-castles, earthy or moral, material or ethereal,
according as the sensuous or the spiritual predominates in his nature.