88 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences^ Arts^ and Letters. 



This sense, he speaks of in the verse just preceding, as tlie 

 " Creative power." And this sense is not unfolded, and these 

 springs of joy are not disclosed, except to the earnest humble vo- 

 tary who waits upon the oracle within. This also, Groethe shows 

 in his enigmatic — 



PARABLE. 



Poems are colored window-glasses ! 



Look iuto the church from the market-square: 

 Nothing but gloom and darkness there! 

 Shrewd Sir Philistine sees things SO: 

 Well may he narrow and captious grow, 



Who all his life on the outside passes. 



But come, now, and inside we'll go! 



Now round the holy chapel gaze; 



'Tis all one many colored blaze; 



Story and emblem, a pictured maze, 

 Flash by y(U: — 'tis a noble show. 



Here feel as sons of God baptized, 



With hearts exalted and surprised. 



Art does not only awaken this art-power, but with this awaken- 

 ing comes constantly delight, admiration, love, and all the nobler 

 emotions, purifying and lii^ting the whole being. Coleridge says 

 of poetry (and what is true of poetry is true of all forms of art), 

 "poetry has been to me its own exceeding great reward; it has 

 multiplied my enjoyments, it has soothed my affections, it has en- 

 deared solitude, and it has given me the habit of wishing to dis- 

 cover the good and beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me." 



De Quincy divides all literature into two classes ; one is of in- 

 formation^ the other is of idower. The one speaks to the under- 

 standing; the other, to the higher faculty we have been consider- 

 ing, and always through affections of pleasure and sympathy. 

 "Eemotely it may travel towards objects in the Lumen Siccum, 

 a phrase of Lord Bacon for the pure reason, but proximately, it 

 must act, or it loses its character as literature of power, in and 

 through that humid light, which illuminates the mists, the irrides- 

 cent hues, and the glittering points of human passions, desires, 

 and genial emotions," 



