_Tristo._ “I believe you are right. But I was about to state why poetry is a valuable--aye, an _in_-valuable gift. Now, observe--I mean, not rhyme, ‘the drowsy tintinnabulum of song’--nor the display of those poetical words, which, like trite coins, have no image nor superscription left--nor yet, ‘in linked sweetness long-drawn out,’ those brilliant figures, which have come down unimpaired from Homer, and serve to conceal the deficiency of sense--but I mean the pure ‘poetry of the heart’--the rich essence of feeling and of thought--whether its expression be prose or verse, ‘oratio soluta,’ vel ‘constricta.’ It is true, without exception, that the purer and less hackneyed are the feelings, the richer and more gushing is this ‘poetry of the heart.’ And this proves its excellence. To the eye and the ear of childhood, the ‘visible face of nature,’ the green beneath, and the ‘skyey blue’ above, with the thousand voices, that come quivering from the forest-depths, are all one vast _poem_, modulated to a measure of dulcet melody, and awakening sympathies inexplicably sweet. Thought to them is a rambling revery, and existence is a thrilling dream. As they lie upon the green grass, and view the sky, and gaze, and gaze upon the unutterable depths, the yearnings for something beyond, beyond, _beyond_, are quick, and strange, and powerful within them. As they grow old, and hardened, and thankless, and wicked, does not poetry vanish, and fancy flee? Are not the dreams of purity, and kindness, and affection, which were but the strugglings of the youthful spirit to attain the blessedness it was made for, supplanted by hard plans, and cold calculations of wealth, and luxury, and restlessness, and pride? Hope and Love, the birds of Paradise, that nestled in the boyish heart, and fluttered with many-colored wings over their warm progeny of kindling wishes, and bright resolves, are banished from their early home, and in their place, with gloomy pinions, settle a thousand cormorant birds, with the vultures of remorseless Ambition, and Greediness for _more_. Who does not feel that it is only in his holier and nobler hours that poesy creeps through him like a spirit, and thoughts of grandeur cause his flesh to quiver, even as the forest is shaken by the footsteps of the wind? Can one, who has but now stained his soul with knavery or meanness, read that unparalleled monologue of Hamlet, and surrender his heart to the greatness of its power? Can any, save he whose spirit is daily and deeply filled with the sublimity of rectitude, appreciate Milton’s sonnet upon his blindness, a specimen of moral grandeur in thought and purpose, which has found no equal in the walks of mind? I say not that even in the bosoms of the vicious and the hardened, the perusal of sublime or lovely conceptions will fail to produce emotion--deep, strong emotion--for, wound and abuse it as you may, there will still, even at three-score years and ten,