It were for me
To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods;
To tell them that this world did equal theirs
Till they had stolen my jewel._
When a poet can, as Shakespeare does here, seize upon a Universal truth
and lay it bare; when, apprehending _passion_ in this instance, he can
show it naked, the master of gods and levelling queens with
milkmaids--_totus est in armis idem quando nudus est Amor;_ when he can
reclothe it in the sensuous body of Cleopatra, "Royal Egypt," and,
rending the robe over that bosom, reveal the Idea again in a wound so
vividly that almost we see the nature of woman spirting, like brood,
against the heaven it defies; then we who have followed the Poet's
ascending claims arrive at his last and highest, yet at one which has
lain implicit all along in his title. He is a Poet--a "Maker." By that
name, "Maker," he used to be known in English, and he deserves no lesser
one.
* * * * *
I have refrained in these pages, and purposely, from technical talk and
from defining the differences between Epic, Dramatic, Lyric Poetry:
between the Ode and the Sonnet, the Satire and the Epigram. To use the
formula of a famous Headmaster of Winchester, "details can be arranged,"
when once we have a clear notion of what Poetry is, and of what by
nature it aims to do.
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