A great poet indeed must be inspired; he must possess an exquisite sense of beauty, and feelings deeper than those of most men, and yet well under his control. "The Milton of poetry is the man, in his own magnificent phrase, of devout prayer to that eternal spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases." [2] And if from one point of view Poetry brings home to us the immeasurable inequalities of different minds, on the other hand it teaches us that genius is no affair of rank or wealth.
"I think of Chatterton, the marvellous boy,
The sleepless soul, that perish'd in his pride;
Of Burns, that walk'd in glory and in joy
Behind his plough upon the mountain-side." [3]
A man may be a poet and yet write no verse, but not if he writes bad or poor ones.
"Mediocribus esse poetis
Non homines, non Di, non concessere columnae." [4]
Second-rate poets, like second-rate writers generally, fade gradually into dreamland; but the great poets remain always.
Poetry will not live unless it be alive, "that which comes from the head goes to the heart;" [5] and Milton truly said that "he who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem."
For "he who, having no touch of the Muses' madness in his soul, comes to the door and thinks he will get into the temple by the help of Art—he, I say, and his Poetry are not admitted." [6]
But the work of the true poet is immortal.
"For have not the verses of Homer continued 2500 years or more without the loss of a syllable or a letter, during which time infinite palaces, temples, castles, cities, have been decayed and demolished? It is not possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, no, nor of the kings or great personages of much later years; for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the life and truth. But the images of men's wits and knowledge remain in books, exempted from the wrong of time and capable of perpetual renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they generate still and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages: so that if the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time and make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illuminations, and inventions, the one of the other?" [7]
The poet requires many qualifications. "Who has traced," says Cousin, "the plan of this poem? Reason. Who has given it life and charm? Love. And who has guided reason and love? The Will."