In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is
indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever man and
woman exist--but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more
than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out
of ages are worthy the grand idea--to them it is confided, and they must
sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or
degrade it.
As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concenter in the real body,
and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of
genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts
are shower'd over with light--the daylight is lit with more volatile
light--the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many
fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or process
exhibits a beauty--the multiplication table its--old age its--the
carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its--the huge-hull'd clean-shap'd
New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatch'd
beauty--the American circles and large harmonies of government gleam
with theirs--and the commonest definite intentions and actions with
theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and
coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of
use--they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit.
You large proprietor, they say, shall not realize or perceive more than
anyone else. The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title
to it, having bought and paid for it. Anyone and everyone is owner of
the library, (indeed he or she alone is owner,) who can read the same
through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in
whom they enter with ease, and make supple and powerful and rich and
large.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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