THE FLIGHT OF THE EAGLE 195 
“To be imprisoned in the viewless winds, 
And blown with restless violence round 
About the pendent world.”’ 
Here is the spontaneous grace and symmetry of 
a forest tree, or a soughing mass of foliage. 
And this passage from my poet I do not think 
could be improved by the verse-maker’s art: — 
“This day before dawn I ascended a hill and look’d at the 
crowded heaven, 
And I said to my Spirit, When we become the enfolders of those 
orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in 
them, shall we be fill’d and satisfied then? 
And my Spirit said, No, we but level that lift, to pass and con- 
tinue beyond.?’ 
Such breaking with the routine poetic, and with 
the grammar of verse, was of course a dangerous 
experiment, and threw the composer absolutely upon 
his intrinsic merits, upon his innately poetic and 
rhythmic quality. He must stand or fall by these 
alone, since he discarded all artificial, all adventi- 
tious helps. If interior, spontaneous rhythm could 
not be relied upon, and the natural music and flexi- 
bility of language, then there was nothing to shield 
the ear from the pitiless hail of words, — not one 
softly padded verse anywhere. 
All poets, except those of the very first order, 
owe immensely to the form, the art, to the stereo- 
typed metres and stock figures they find ready to 
their hand. The form is suggestive, — it invites and 
aids expression, and lends itself readily, like fash- 
ion, to conceal, or extenuate, or eke out poverty of 
thought and feeling in the verse. The poet can 
“cut and cover,” as the farmer says, in a way the 
