For as it is dislocation and detachment from the life of God that
makes things ugly, the poet, who re-attaches things to nature and the
Whole,--re-attaching even artificial things and violations of nature,
to nature, by a deeper insight,--disposes very easily of the most
disagreeable facts. Readers of poetry see the factory-village and the
railway, and fancy that the poetry of the landscape is broken up by
these; for these works of art are not yet consecrated in their reading;
but the poet sees them fall within the great Order not less than the
beehive or the spider's geometrical web. Nature adopts them very fast
into her vital circles, and the gliding train of cars she loves like
her own. Besides, in a centred mind, it signifies nothing how many
mechanical inventions you exhibit. Though you add millions, and never so
surprising, the fact of mechanics has not gained a grain's weight. The
spiritual fact remains unalterable, by many or by few particulars; as no
mountain is of any appreciable height to break the curve of the sphere.
A shrewd country-boy goes to the city for the first time, and the
complacent citizen is not satisfied with his little wonder. It is not
that he does not see all the fine houses and know that he never saw such
before, but he disposes of them as easily as the poet finds place for
the railway. The chief value of the new fact is to enhance the great and
constant fact of Life, which can dwarf any and every circumstance, and
to which the belt of wampum and the commerce of America are alike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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