estimated), there was a place even on the Hellenic Parnassus for
gnomic bards, and theirs in the nature of the case must always be
the largest public.

"Music is the perfection of the soul or the idea of poetry," so you
wrote; "the vagueness of exaltation aroused by a sweet air (which
should be indefinite and never too strongly suggestive) is precisely
what we should aim at in poetry." You aimed at that mark, and
struck it again and again, notably in "Helen, thy beauty is to me,"
in "The Haunted Palace," "The Valley of Unrest," and "The City in
the Sea." But by some Nemesis which might, perhaps, have been
foreseen, you are, to the world, the poet of one poem--"The Raven:"
a piece in which the music is highly artificial, and the
"exaltation" (what there is of it) by no means particularly "vague."
So a portion of the public know little of Shelley but the "Skylark,"
and those two incongruous birds, the lark and the raven, bear each
of them a poet's name, vivu' per ora virum. Your theory of poetry,
if accepted, would make you (after the author of "Kubla Khan") the
foremost of the poets of the world; at no long distance would come
Mr. William Morris as he was when he wrote "Golden Wings," "The Blue
Closet," and "The Sailing of the Sword;" and, close up, Mr. Lear,
the author of "The Yongi Bongi Bo," an the lay of the "Jumblies."

On the other hand Homer would sink into the limbo to which you
consigned Moliere. If we may judge a theory by its results, when
compared with the deliberate verdict of the world, your aesthetic
does not seem to hold water. The "Odyssey" is not really inferior
to "Ulalume," as it ought to be if your doctrine of poetry were
correct, nor "Le Festin de Pierre" to "Undine." Yet you deserve the
praise of having been constant, in your poetic practice, to your