And
in the ranks of our multitudinous verse-writers, it is not the most
prepossessing who are loudest in promising us a fair spectacle. How
harsh-voiced and stammering are some of these obscure apostles who are
offering to exhibit the entire mystery of their gift of tongues! We see
more impressive figures, to be sure. Here is the saturnine Poe, who with
contemptuous smile assures us that we are welcome to all the secrets of
his creative frenzies. Here is our exuberant Walt Whitman, crying, "Stop
this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all
poems." [Footnote: _Song of Myself_.] But though we scan every face
twice, we find here no Shakespeare promising us the key to creation of a
_Hamlet_.
Still, is it not well to follow a forlorn hope? Among the less
vociferous, here are singers whose faces are alight with a mysterious
radiance. Though they promise us little, saying that they themselves are
blinded by the transcendent vision, so that they appear as men groping
in darkness, yet may they not unawares afford us some glimpse of their
transfiguration?
If we refuse the poet's revelation, we have no better way of arriving at
the truth.
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