all love, has leisure and expanse--he leaves room ahead of himself. He is
no irresolute or suspicious lover--he is sure--he scorns intervals. His
experience and the showers and thrills are not for nothing. Nothing can jar
him: suffering and darkness cannot--death and fear cannot. To him complaint
and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the earth--he saw
them buried. The sea is not surer of the shore, or the shore of the sea,
than he is of the fruition of his love, and of all perfection and beauty.

The fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss--it is inevitable as
life--it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight proceeds
another eyesight, and from the hearing proceeds another hearing, and from
the voice proceeds another voice, eternally curious of the harmony of
things with man. To these respond perfections, not only in the committees
that were supposed to stand for the rest, but in the rest themselves just
the same. These understand the law of perfection in masses and floods--that
its finish is to each for itself and onward from itself--that it is profuse
and impartial--that there is not a minute of the light or dark, nor an acre
of the earth or sea, without it--nor any direction of the sky, nor any
trade or employment, nor any turn of events. This is the reason that about
the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance,--one part
does not need to be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one
who has the most lithe and powerful organ: the pleasure of poems is not in
them that take the handsomest measure and similes and sound.

Without effort, and without exposing in the least how it is done, the
greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and
scenes and persons, some more and some less, to bear on your individual
character, as you hear or read. To do this well is to compete with the laws
that pursue and follow time. What is the purpose must surely be there, and
the clue of it must be there; and the faintest indication is the indication