Is not the “sonorous ring,” however, more characteristic of eloquence than of poetry? Poetry does begin where eloquence ends; it is a higher and finer harmony. Nearly all men feel the power of eloquence, but poetry does not sway the multitude; it does not sway at all,--it lifts, and illuminates, and soothes. It reaches the spirit, while eloquence stops with the reason and the emotions. Eloquence is much the more palpable, real, available; it is a wind that fills every sail and makes every mast bend, while poetry is a breeze touched with a wild perfume from field or wood. Poetry is consistent with perfect tranquillity of spirit; a true poem may have the calm of a summer day, the placidity of a mountain lake, but eloquence is a torrent, a tempest, mass in motion, an army with banners, the burst of a hundred instruments of music. Tennyson’s “Maud” is a notable blending of the two. There is something martial in eloquence, the roll of the drum, the cry of the fife, the wheel and flash of serried ranks. Its end is action; it shapes events, it takes captive the reason and the understanding. Its basis is earnestness, vehemence, depth of conviction. There is no eloquence without heat, and no poetry without light. An earnest man is more or less an eloquent man. Eloquence belongs to the world of actual affairs and events; it is aroused by great wrongs and great dangers, it flourishes in the forum and the senate. Poetry is more private and personal, is more for the soul and the religious instincts; it courts solitude and wooes the ideal. Anything swiftly told or described, the sense of speed and volume, is, or approaches, eloquence; while anything heightened and deepened, any meaning and beauty suddenly revealed, is, or approaches, poetry. Hume says of the eloquence of Demosthenes, “It is rapid harmony, exactly adjusted to the sense. It is vehement reasoning without any appearance of art; it is disdain, anger, boldness, freedom, involved in a continual stream of argument.” The passions of eloquence and poetry differ in this respect; one is reason inflamed, the other is imagination kindled. Any object of magnitude in swift motion, a horse at the top of his speed, a regiment of soldiers on the double quick, a train of cars under full way, moves us in a way that the same object at rest does not. The great secret of eloquence is to set mass in motion, to marshal together facts and considerations, imbue them with passion, and hurl them like an army on the charge upon the mind of the reader or hearer. The pleasure we derive from eloquence is more acute, more physiological, I might say, more of the blood and animal spirits, than our pleasure from poetry. I imagine it was almost a dissipation to have heard a man like Father Taylor. One’s feelings and emotions were all out of their banks like the creeks in spring. But this was largely the result of his personal magnetism and vehemence of utterance.