The Poetry of Real Life A New Edition, Much Enlarged and Improved. By Henry Ellison |
 |
TO CERTAIN FINGER-RHYMERS. |
 |
|
 | The Poetry of Real Life |  |
TO CERTAIN FINGER-RHYMERS.
I cannot stop to pick shells by the way,When the great sea is roaring wide and near—
I cannot do these things: they interfere
With the more present matter, and make play
Of the great thoughts that on my spirit lay
Divine constraint, and my soul onward bear,
Like the deep sea, forthright in its career,
Till it has given voice to what 't would say!
I cannot dwell on secondary things,
Nor minute-stop, to th' answering click of rhyme,
Exactly, each beat of my Muse's wings—
She takes a wide sweep of the air, to climb
The sphere, like Morning, and Creation's strings
So touch, at either end, with flight sublime!
As some persons are apt to take everything literally, and weigh a metaphor as they would a fact, I may remark, once for all, in reference to such passages, that the poet does not so much expresss his sense of his own merits, as endeavour to express his thought in the most striking manner; in doing which himself is the last thing, perhaps, that occupies him, till he finds an apology necessary for forgetting that he had been praising himself.
| The Poetry of Real Life | |