Look at a child's toys, and we shall understand the matter well
enough. Imagination is the fairy godmother (every child has one still),
at the wave of whose wand sticks become heroes, the closet in which she
has been shut fifty times for being naughty is turned into a palace, and
a bit of lath acquires all the potency of Excalibur.
But nowadays it is the understanding itself that has turned poet. In her
railroads she has given us the shoes of swiftness. Fine-Ear herself
could not hear so far as she, who in her magnetic telegraph can listen
in Boston and hear what is going on in New Orleans. And what need of
Aladdin's lamp when a man can build a palace with a patent pill? The
office of the poet seems to be reversed, and he must give back these
miracles of the understanding to poetry again, and find out what there
is imaginative in steam and iron and telegraph-wires. After all, there
is as much poetry in the iron horses that eat fire as in those of Diomed
that fed on men. If you cut an apple across you may trace in it the
lines of the blossom that the bee hummed around in May, and so the soul
of poetry survives in things prosaic. Borrowing money on a bond does not
seem the most promising subject in the world, but Shakespeare found the
"Merchant of Venice" in it. Themes of song are waiting everywhere for
the right man to sing them, like those enchanted swords which no one can
pull out of the rock till the hero comes, and he finds no more trouble
than in plucking a violet.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43