THE ART-PRINCIPLE IN POETRY 211 



the executor of its own will. The scope of the crea- 

 tive faculty is therefore the utmost conceivable, and 

 poetry rightfully takes the highest place as the art 

 of the greatest possibilities — the art, indeed, of an 

 all-inclusive compass, as at length completely self- 

 supplying and self-directing. 



VI 



If we now sum up all that our inquiry has gathered 

 concerning the essential principle of poetic art, our 

 result is this : What makes a poem a poem is the 

 fact that there is presented in it, in a rounded whole 

 of rigorous unity, a theme of real-ideality — a theme 

 founded in actual experience, but transfigured in the 

 light of the ideal borne within it which unites it at 

 once with the reality of Nature and with the Supreme 

 Ideal toward which all Nature moves. This real-ideal 

 strikes in with the law of Nature, expresses it, and is 

 in fact its product. The theme this affords the poet 

 must be embodied in exact accordance with its own 

 nature, and simply for its own worth, for its own 

 beauty, for its own sake. The whole that this em- 

 bodiment gives must be a literal creation, a unit 

 thoroughly new and one ; and if it is a complex unit, 

 as in dramas and epics, every one of its members, 

 whether characters or incidents, must be equally 

 unique and created. Finally, this creative embodi- 



