metre,) it yet becomes a just, and not merely discriminative, but full
and adequate, definition of poetry in its highest and most peculiar
sense, only so far as the distinction still results from the poetic
genius, which sustains and modifies the emotions, thoughts, and vivid
representations of the poem by the energy without effort of the poet's
own mind,--by the spontaneous activity of his imagination and fancy, and
by whatever else with these reveals itself in the balancing and
reconciling of opposite or discordant qualities, sameness with
difference, a sense of novelty and freshness with old or customary
objects, a more than usual state of emotion with more than usual order,
self-possession and judgment with enthusiasm and vehement feeling,--and
which, while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial,
still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter, and our
admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the images, passions,
characters, and incidents of the poem:-


Doubtless, this could not be, but that she turns
Bodies to _spirit_ by sublimation strange,
As fire converts to fire the things it burns--
As we our food into our nature change!

From their gross matter she abstracts _their_ forms,
And draws a kind of quintessence from things,
Which to her proper nature she transforms
To bear them light on her celestial wings!

_Thus_ doth she, when from _individual states_
She doth abstract the universal kinds,
_Which then reclothed in diverse names and fates