No smooth array of phrase,
Artfully sought and ordered though it be,
Which the cold rhymer lays
Upon his page languid industry
Can wake the listless pulse to livelier speed.
* * * * *
The secret wouldst thou know
To touch the heart or fire the blood at will?
Let thine own eyes o'erflow;
Let thy lips quiver with the passionate thrill.
Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be past,
And bind, in words, the fleet emotion fast.

Coleridge's comprehension of this fact led him to cry, "Love is the
vital air of my genius." [Footnote: Letter to his wife, March 12, 1799.]

All this, considering the usual subject-matter of poetry, is perhaps
only saying that the poet must be sincere. The mathematician is most
sincere when he uses his intellect exclusively, but a reasoned portrayal
of passion is bound to falsify, for it leads one insensibly either to
understate, or to burlesque, or to indulge in a psychopathic analysis of
emotion. [Footnote: Of the latter type of poetry a good example is Edgar
Lee Masters' _Monsieur D---- and the Psycho-Analyst_.]

Accordingly, our poets have not been slow to remind us of their
passionate temperaments. Landor, perhaps, may oblige us to dip into his
biography in order to verify our thesis that the poet is invariably
passionate, but in many cases this state of things is reversed, the poet
being wont to assure us that the conventional incidents of his life