Had the sculptor never touched his chisel to the marble, nor the painter his brush to the canvas, nor the poet his pen to the paper, that same spirit, yet not bodied, would have existed within his own soul, but never would have been beheld by others. To be seen by other eyes, it must needs take on a visible body, a concrete form, in which it shall dwell.
Thus all forms of Nature and all forms of Art, whatsoever, are the mere bodying expressions of the spirit that inhabits them. Form is necessary, but only as a medium through which the spirit may reveal itself visibly.
The intuitive and unconscious recognition of this principle, that the soul within fashions the body it inhabits,—the grandest principle of all God’s great laws, the foundation of them all, illimitable as the immortal Giver—is the door-way through which he who thus recognizes must inevitably enter Nature and Art to enjoy the full communion of the soul within, and to interpret the beauties of that soul’s divinity to us.
He who thus enters is possessed of genius. In other words, he has a great soul and lives close to Nature’s heart. We of lesser genius, or of less loving souls (for a great soul is one that loves greatly) commune with the indwelling spirit less freely. If we approach Nature or Art consciously and try to unlock some side-door by the key of the intellect, we shall probably find only cast-off garments; nay, many of us may find that the door will not open and we must content ourselves with a peep through the key-hole. Indeed, do not the multitude behold the elegant structures of Nature and Art wonderingly for but a moment, without even so much as attempting the key-hole, and then plod on, unconscious that there is an indwelling soul that has thus fashioned its earthly home?
This same great foundation-principle of Nature is likewise the fundamental law of poetry and of all other art. For art, at best, is nature wrought by man. What else can it be? It is fashioned by simply a lesser Divinity, the soul of man, consequently less perfectly, and follows the same law. Or better yet, art is nature wrought through the instrumentality of man by the great Divinity that works in him. Art is simply a name used to designate a specific manifestation or kind of nature;—that kind that comes through man, and has, not life, but spirit; not life, but the picture, the show, the mirrored image of life: a sort of record of the soul, and a lamp for its future guidance.
He who, by means of rhythmic words inspirited, can paint this picture, represent this show, mirror this image of life, historicize this record of the soul, light this lamp and hold it above the heads of the trampling ages for the guidance of humanity, is the great poet.
Just in proportion to the greatness of such a soul will be the spirit that imbues his creations. It cannot create a new form unless it first implants some germ from its own spiritual self. Not only must there be the spirit as the prime essential of poetry, the soul within that fashions the rhythmical and metrical form it inhabits, but that spirit must partake of that divinity that is in every human heart;—that divine flower, deep-rooted in the soil of God, sometimes blossoming to an angel-image, sometimes painting the glories of heaven on its petals, sometimes breathing its deepest-drawn perfumes up from its muse-beloved blooms to the throne above.
Would the soul create a statue, it must see “an angel in that marble” ere it give the angel form; would it paint a picture, it must behold within itself the transfiguration ere it live transfigured on the canvas; would it write a poem, it must be a paradise of eternal love and beauty ere it breathe immortal glory into words.
It is this soul within that comes out of the maker of the statue, the maker of the picture, the maker of the melody, the maker of the poem, and enters his creations, that distinguishes true art from mere mechanism of art.
It is this same soul within that renders the artist, not a chiseler of stone, a painter of canvas, a placer of notes, a rhymer of words, but a maker, a creator, in his own lesser realm of nature.