My sole intent has been to clarify that notion,
which (if the reader has been patient to follow me) reveals the Poet as
a helper of man's most insistent spiritual need and therefore as a
member most honourable in any commonwealth: since, as Ben Jonson says:
"Every beggarly corporation affords the State a mayor or two bailiffs
yearly; but _solus rex, aut poeta, non quotannis nascitur_"--these two
only, a King and a Poet, are not born every year. The Poet "makes"--that
is to say, creates--which is a part of the divine function; and he
makes--using man's highest instruments, thought and speech--harmonious
inventions that answer the harmony we humbly trace in the firmament
fashioned, controlled, upheld, by divine wisdom. _"Non c'e' in mondo,_"
said Torquato Tasso proudly, _"chi merita nome di creatore, se non Iddio
ed il Poeta"_--"Two beings only deserve the name of Creator: God and the
Poet."
THE END
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