No More Learning

The greatest poet forms the
consistence of what is to be from what has been and is. He drags the dead
out of their coffins, and stands them again on their feet: he says to the
past, Rise and walk before me that I may realise you. He learns the
lesson--he places himself where the future becomes present. The greatest
poet does not only dazzle his rays over character and scenes and
passions,--he finally ascends and finishes all: he exhibits the pinnacles
that no man can tell what they are for or what is beyond--he glows a moment
on the extremest verge. He is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile
or frown: by that flash of the moment of parting the one that sees it shall
be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. The greatest poet does
not moralise or make applications of morals,--he knows the soul. The soul
has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any
lessons but its own. But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride, and
the one balances the other, and neither can stretch too far while it
stretches in company with the other. The inmost secrets of art sleep with
the twain. The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both, and they are
vital in his style and thoughts.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of
letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity,--nothing can
make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the heave
of impulse, and pierce intellectual depths, and give all subjects their
articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to speak in
literature with the perfect rectitude and insousiance of the movements of
animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods
and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph of art. If you, have
looked on him who has achieved it, you have looked on one of the masters of
the artists of all nations and times.
You shall not contemplate the flight
of the grey-gull over the bay, or the mettlesome action of the blood-horse,
or the tall leaning of sunflowers on their stalk, or the appearance of the
sun journeying through heaven, or the appearance of the moon afterward,
with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. The greatest
poet has less a marked style, and is more the channel of thoughts and
things without increase or diminution, and is the free channel of himself.
He swears to his art,--I will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my
writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me
and the rest like curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the
richest curtains. What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may
exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or
heat or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or
pourtray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition.
You shall stand by my side, and look in the mirror with me.

The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved by
their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease through and out of
that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not. Of the traits of
the brotherhood of writers, savans, musicians, inventors, and artists,
nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms. In the
need of poems, philosophy, politics, mechanism, science, behaviour, the
craft of art, an appropriate native grand opera, shipcraft or any craft, he
is greatest for ever and for ever who contributes the greatest original
practical example. The cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere
worthy of itself, and makes one.

The messages of great poets to each man and woman are,--Come to us on equal
terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than you; what we
enclose you enclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did you suppose there
could be only one Supreme?