The inquiry may naturally suggest itself, whether the imaginative truth which poetry aspires to is not above the reach of humanity, and unavailing therefore to its necessities. Unquestionably, if any one goes forth into active life with an undisciplined imagination, expecting from the world what the world cannot give, the result is as disastrous as the aim is irrational. But if the heart take counsel of imagination for the guidance of its passions, the chastening and elevating of its affections, there is no danger in the height of the imaginative standard. In proof of this position there has been conclusively quoted that precept of the Saviour's which bids men, with all the accumulation of their faculties, "Be perfect," and, more than that, sets before them for imitation the model inimitable of God's own perfection. The precept may with difficulty be reconciled with the rules of our calculating faculties, but it is addressed to the imagination and comprehended by it. It stands the most sublime of all the divine sentences in the Sermon on the Mount, -the most ennobling and elevating words ever spoken to poor humanity. It may also be noticed, in vindication of the calumniated power under discussion, that the Christian rule for the guidance of our conduct to others is addressed to the imagination; and thus you may see that one evil of a sluggish imagination will be a sluggish sympathy with our fellow-beings.

But the energies of poetry are employed not only in invention, but in the discovery of truth :-not only, in Lord Bacon's words, "for the invention of a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute variety," but to revive the neglected glories of the world as it is, to gather the fragments of splendour from amid the ruins of our fallen nature, to lift from the soul the weight of custom and materialism, to awaken a consciousness to the neglected emotions of daily life, and to trace the associations between the universe of sense and the spiritual life within us. These are the aims of true poetry; and to grasp the thoughts and feelings which are perpetually flitting across the mind, eluding the touch of a gross philosophy, there are a thousand influences at work, which in the pride of our calculating faculties are despised, because they are not susceptible of measurement by the understanding. Will any one who has reflected on the constitution of man,

D

of Channing

both spiritual and material, and the world in which he is placed, venture to say, for instance, that the sun travels his glorious course only to light men to their work and give them warmth? Why then does he rise in such magnificence, and why set with such ever-varying splendour? Why is it that every unclouded night ten thousand stars are looking down upon us from the heavens? Why is it that even the storm comes arrayed with a sublimity of its own? Why does the earth break forth from its winter's torpor in all the luxuriance of spring? And why is there beauty in the human countenance? Men and women would no doubt accomplish their work as well and be as useful if every face we looked on was the face of ugliness. Iufluences that cannot be expounded are active on every side and during every period of life; and though unimportant when mentioned separately, no one can divine how great is their sway in the formation of human character. Who can explain how music falling on the ear moves the spirit within us? and yet we know that it can give courage in the hour of battle and fervour to acts of devotion. I cannot tell how the soft blue of an unclouded sky so impresses the feelings with a sense of its placid beauty that the heart of him who looks up to it from amidst the turmoil of life is touched as with a blessing; but this I know,-that, when God foretold the curses with which he would visit his rebellious people, among the penalties announced by the inspired lawgiver there was a threat that the sky should be to them like brass.

It is the poet's duty to deepen human sympathies and to enlarge their sphere; to cast a light upon the common heart of the whole race; to calm the anxieties and to sustain the highest and farthest purposes of our being. Imagination, the prime nourisher of hope, is the characteristic of man as a progressive creature; and its most strenuous efforts are given to dignify, to elevate, to purify, and to spiritualize. In the history of the literature of all nations the herald of its day is the morning-star of poetry; and, when it passes away, the last light that lingers after it is the ever-aspiring ray from its setting orb. In all ages and conditions of society it is present; for it is supplied from "the inexhaustible springs of truth and feeling which are ever gurgling and boiling up in the caverns of the human heart." Such being the purpose of poetry, it may be safely said that it is moral wisdom. Its closest affinity is with religion; for it ministers to faith and hope and love. A meek and dutiful attendant in the temple of faith, it is in humble alliance for the defence and rescue of exposed humanity. It has been sagely remarked by a philosophic writer, that the belief is erroneous that the hearts of the many are constitutionally weak, languishing, and slow to

SPIRITUAL ASPIRATIONS.

35

answer the requisitions of things; and that rather the true sorrow of humanity consists in this :-not that the mind fails, but that the course and demands of action and life so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of human desires, and hence that which is slow to languish is too easily turned aside and abused. To this are all the great productions of the Muse directed, controlling the discord between the course of life and the dignity of human desires, chastening the passions and guiding them in safe channels and to worthy objects. In Shakspeare's wonderful delineation of the melancholy of Hamlet, it is the representation of a noble heart aching with a sense of the hollowness, the insufficiency of the stale and unprofitable uses of the world to answer its aspirations. There is the wretchedness and the desolation of a spirit feeling itself at variance with life; and this morbid mood of mind speaks in words expressive of a gloomy absence of delight in all he looks upon, and yet at the same time the loftiest consciousness of the endowments of the human soul:-"It goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy, the air, this brave o'erhanging firmament,—this majestic roof, fretted with golden fire,-why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculties! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals!"

This is the language of disease,—of disease to which all are exposed, because, amid the frailty and corruption of our natural desires, the heart will sink down to low objects and be perverted to unholy ones. When the supplies of the heart fail and its cravings cannot find their proper nourishment, the world and all that is upon it become unsubstantial and unreal. The life, in which is staked eternal happiness, becomes worthless and barren, as it seemed to the guilty fancy of Macbeth," this bank and shoal of time." It is poetry that is charged with the duty of ministering its help to this peril of humanity. Imagination, chastened and cherished, will discover dignity and happiness in life's lowliest duties, and, rising higher, will behold-as an angel might behold--this earth with its dark sea, with all that is vile upon the surface and with the nations of the dead mouldering beneath, yet a star glittering in the firmament and peopled with beings redeemed for immortality.

If such be the nature and the power of poetry, it should not be difficult to discover some mighty influences exerted by it upon the mind of When we look into the region of paganism, what was the high poetry of the ancients but a struggle for something more adequate than

man.

了

a sensual faith to fill the caverns of the heart? When the knowledge of the Godhead, too vast for the fallen mind, was dispersed into the fantasies of polytheism, when a thousand deities were enshrined in gorgeous temples and in the household,-when men were bowing down before images, or worshipping the sun, or fire, or whatever they might chance to turn to,-amid all these perverted creeds the most sublime aspirations, those approaching nearest to the sphere of truth, were the efforts of poetic genius. It was neither reason nor the lore of philosophic schools, but the creative faculty of imagination, that wrestled most strenuously with paganism. The moral wisdom of ancient heathendom was in its great poems. It was by the breath of imagination that the mist of superstition was broken; and ever and anon a portion of it floated upward, a white and sunlit cloud.

The philosophy of the most enlightened nation of antiquity went down, down, till it settled into the iron inhumanity of Stoicism and the imbruted sensuality and fiend-like scorn of the Epicurean; but in the domains of imagination the light and warmth of truth were never wholly quenched. On that sublime occasion when an inspired apostle struck a blow at the superstitions of Greece (St. Paul at Athens), his spirit stirring within him, for he "saw the city wholly given to idolatry," he was encountered by philosophers; and thus was the scornful question:-"What will this babbler say?" And when he preached the resurrection of the dead, they mocked." Now, when the pride of pagan philosophy was thus arrayed in enmity against Christianity, I beg you to reflect upon the fact that enough of truth had been preserved in pagan poetry to enable that same apostolic tongue to mingle the familiar words of the Greek poets with the lessons of the gospel.

So is it in all ages. What is indeed poetry is subservient to truth and to man's moral growth. Our complex nature-the mysterious mingling of the spiritual and the material-baffles philosophy; and, reviewing the annals of knowledge and looking only to its human. sources, a deeper insight into the nature of the soul has been gained by poetry than by countless theories from the exploded dogmas of antiquity, even to the latest metaphysical scheme devised by the materialism or mysticism of our own times. The light of revelation shut out, this earthly life is a long and darksome cavern; and when in imagination I behold the human race threading their way through it, I see the mighty poets, at distant intervals, the only torch-bearers in the vast procession, holding on high a light to reach the rock-ribbed roof. What is it but their truth that has perpetuated their poems better than all the litera

INFLUENCE OF POETRY.

37 ture of remote times, and brought down in safety the Homeric poems from an age so ancient that history has never reached it? What fact could I mention more impressive than the existence of those poems,— at first dependent on the mere memory of an affectionate admiration, and then on the perishable records in ancient use, and yet preserved probably more than three thousand years? Their moral wisdom has won the blessing of length of days. When our thoughts seek other acquaintance than what the Bible gives with ages long ago, they travel back to Homer. Of all the literature other than what was recorded by direct inspiration he is reverenced as the father. In the fine lines of a living poet, little known,—

"Far from all measured space, yet clear and plain
As sun at noon, 6
a mighty orb of song'
Illumes extremest heaven. Beyond the throng
Of lesser stars, that rise, and wax, and wane,-
The transient rulers of the fickle main,-

One stedfast light gleams through the dark and long
And narrowing aisle of memory. How strong!

How fortified with all the numerous train

Of human truths! Great poet of thy kind

Wert thou, whose verse, capacious as the sea,

And various as the voices of the wind,

Swell'd with the gladness of the battle's glee,

And yet could glorify infirmity,

When Priam wept, or shame-struck Helen pined."

If we seek to judge of poetry by recorded instances of its influence, there might be cited the classical event commemorated by Milton,— the fierceness of Spartan and Macedonian warfare checked by verse, when

"The great Emathian conqueror bid spare

The house of Pindarus, when tower and temple
Went to the ground; and the repeated air

Of sad Electra's poet had the power

To save the Athenian walls from ruin bare."

Or in modern history might be suggested that beautiful incident in the life of the conqueror of Canada, when, on the eve of the victory upon the "Heights of Abraham," Wolfe expressed a willingness to exchange the anticipated glory of his conquest for the fame of Gray's Elegy. But, in arguing from historically-recorded instances of poetical influences, let me refer to cases of wider operation. It is stated by Bishop Burnet, in the "History of his Own Times," that when James II. was in very unsteady possession of the English throne, a ballad was