"Poetry," says Milton, if he be indeed the author of "Nova Solyma," "is the impetuous rush of a mind full to overflowing, strained, exalted to its utmost powers, yea, rather, lifted into ecstacy beyond itself."[C] Could we accept this (as we cannot) as a complete definition of the poetic faculty, we might then place Traherne in the very front rank of inspired singers. It would be impossible to give a better description of the leading characteristics of his poetry than that which we find in the words of Milton. Not Milton himself, nor even Shelley, has more of the impetuous rush of a mind lifted into ecstacy beyond itself than Traherne. No poet writes with more absolute spontaneity than he. Whatever may be wanting in him, however he may occasionally fail in expression, he has always this impetuous rush, this ecstacy that rises beyond itself. A glowing ardour of conviction, a passionate spirit of love and devotion, a profound sense of the beauty and sublimity which he saw everywhere around him, a never-failing aspiration towards that Goodness which he believed to be the Fountain and the Ocean, the Beginning and the End of Things, were the sources of his inspiration, the impelling forces of his genius. Where these qualities are present their possessor can never altogether fail in expressing them, however deficient he may be in the technical accomplishments of the poet's art. These things indeed are the root, if not the flower, of all poetry worthy of the name. That Traherne was essentially a poet we might be certain even if none of his lyrical work had remained to prove it. The man who could say, "You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars"--a sentence which contains the essence of everything that has been said by the poets who have sung of the relation between the soul of man and the spirit of Nature--did not need to write in verse in order to prove that he was beyond all question a poet. There is enough of the spirit of poetry in "Christian Ethicks" and "Centuries of Meditations" to set up a dozen versifiers. It was as impossible for Traherne to see things as a Jeremy Bentham or a Cobbett saw them, as it was for either or the latter to have written the sentence I have just quoted. And who shall say that the light of imagination through which Traherne and those who resemble him behold the universe is a light which misleads them? Why should we assume that those who view it with eyes that are blind to all but its prosaic aspects are its true interpreters? Whatever else it may be, the universe, it is certain, is a marvellous and stupendous poem; and it is singular indeed if those who are insensible to this truth are able to see it in a clearer light than those who are alive to all its beauty, to all its magnificence, and to all its mystery.