What Is a Poet?

No jingler of rhymes, and no mingler of phrases,
No tuner of times, and no pruner of daisies,
No lullaby lyrist with nothing to say,
No small sentimentalist fainting away,
No Ardert of albums, no trifling Tyrtaeus,
No bilious misanthrope loathing to see us,
No gradus-and-prosody maker of verses,
No Hector of tragedy vapouring curses —
In a word — not a bad one — no mere " poetaster, "
The monkey that follows some troubadour master,
And filching from Tennyson, Shelly, or Keats,
With cunning mosaic his coterie cheats
Into voting the poor petty-larceny fool,
A charming disciple of Wordsworth's sweet school!

Not a bit of it! — Pilferers, duncy and dreary:
Human society 's utterly weary
Of gilt insincerities hopping in verse,
And stately hexameters plumed like a hearse,
And second-hand sentiments sugared with ice,
And a third course of passions, warmed up very nice,
And peaches of wax, and your sham wooden pine,
The fitting desert of a feast so divine!

With musical lies and mechanical stuff
The verse-ridden world has been pestered enough;
And yet in his heart, if unsmothered by words,
It still can respond from its innermost chords,
To generous, truthful, melodious Sense,
To beautiful language and feelings intense,
To human affection sincerely pour'd out,
To Eloquence — tagged with a rhyme, or without,
To any thing tasteful, and hearty, and true,
Delicate, graceful, and noble, and new.

Ay: — find me the man — or the woman — or child,
Though modest, yet bold, and though spirited, mild,
With a mind that can think, and a heart that can feel,
And the tongue and the pen that are skilled to reveal,
And the eye that hath wept, and the hand that will aid,
And the brow that in peril was never afraid —
With courage to dare, and with keenness to plan,
And tact to declare what is pleasant to Man,
While guiding, and teaching, and training his mind,
While spurring the lazy, and leading the blind,
With pureness in youth, and religion in age,
And cordial affection at every stage —
The harp of this woman, this man, or this youth,
By genius well-strung, and made tuneful by truth,
Shall charm and shall ravish the world at its will,
And make its old heart yet tremble and thrill,
While all men shall own it, and feel it, and know it,
Gladly and gratefully — Here is the poet!
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