Chamberss Edinburgh Journal, No. 443 | Page 3

dying, dying, dying.[2]
This is a sample of the spiritual wine we have talked of--something to
elevate and intoxicate. But the picture it presents does not pass away in
the reaction of the morning. It haunts us in all after-life, rising up
before us in the pauses of the world, to heal and refresh our wearied
spirits.

As in this poem the pleasure is caused by its appeals to the imagination
heightening the feeling the scene naturally excites; by the spiritual and
material world being linked together as regards the music; and by the
connection established between the echoes and the sky, field, hill, and
river, where they die--just so it is with the poetry of moral feeling. The
spectacle we have instanced of the young mother watching her sleeping
infant, is in itself beautiful; but it becomes poetical when we imagine
the feeling of beauty united in her mind with the instinct of love, and
detect in her glance, moist with emotion, the blending of hopes,
memories, pride, and tearful joy. Poetry, therefore, is not moral feeling,
but something that heightens and adorns it. It is not even a direct moral
agent, for it deepens the lesson only through the medium of the feelings
and imagination. Thus moral poetry, when reduced to writing, is
merely morality conveyed in the form of poetry; and in like manner,
religious poetry, is religion so conveyed. The thing conveyed, however,
must harmonise with the medium, for poetry will not consent to give an
enduring form to what is false or pernicious. It has often been remarked,
with a kind of superstitious wonder, that poems of an immoral
character never live long; but the reason is, that it is the characteristic
of immorality to tie down man in the chains of the senses, and this
shews that it has nothing in common with the spiritual nature of poetry.
For the same reason, a poem based upon atheism, although it might
attract attention for a time, would meet with no permanent response in
the human breast; religion being Truth, and poetry her peculiar
ministrant.
Although written poetry, however, does not necessarily come into this
subject, it may be observed, that the comparative incapacity of the
present generation to enjoy the poetical is clearly exhibited in its
literature. Never was there so much verse, and so little poetry. Never
was the faculty of rhyming so impartially spread over the whole mass
of society. The difficulty used to be, to find one possessed of the gift:
now it is nearly as difficult to find one who is not. Formerly, to write
verses was a distinction: now it is a distinction not to write them--and
one of some consequence. But with all this multitude of poets, there is
not one who can take his place with the comparatively great names of
the past, or vanishing generation. Now and then we have a brilliant

thought--even a certain number of verses deserving the name of a poem;
but there is no sustained poetical power, nothing to mark an epoch, or
glorify a name. When we commend, it is some passage distinct from
the poem, something small, and finished, and complete in itself. The
taste of the day runs more upon conceits and extravagances, such as
Cowley would have admired, and which he might have envied. The
suddenness of the impression, so to speak, made by great poets, their
direct communication with the heart, belongs to another time. It is our
ambition to come to the same end by feats of ingenuity; and instead of
touching the feelings, and setting the imagination of the reader
instantaneously aglow, to exercise his skill in unravelling and
interpretation. We expect the pleasure of success to reward him for the
fatigue.
The same feeling is at work, as we have already pointed out, in
decorative art; in which 'a redundancy of useless or ridiculous ornament
is called richness, and the inability to appreciate simple and beautiful,
or grand and noble forms, receives the name of genius.' The connection
is curious, likewise, between this ingenuity of poetry and that of the
machinery which gives a distinguishing character to our epoch. It looks
as if the complication of images, working towards a certain end, were
only another development of the genius that invents those wonderful
instruments which the eye cannot follow till they are familiarly
entertained--and sometimes not even then. If this idea were kept in
view, there would be at least some wit, although no truth, in the
common theory which attempts to account for the decline of poetry.
Neither advancement in science, however, nor ingenuity in mechanics,
is in itself, as the theory alleges, hostile to the poetical; on the contrary,
the materials of poetry multiply with the progress of both. The prosaic
character of the age