ABSTRACT
The poet thinks and feels in the spirit of human passions. A poem is the image of life expressed in its eternal truth. There is this difference between a story and a poem, that a story is a catalogue of detached facts, which have no other bond of connection than time, place, circumstance, cause and effect. The other is the creation of actions according to the unchangeable forms of human nature, as existing in the mind of the creator, which is itself the image of all other minds. The story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful: Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted. Religion, the ardor of lofty enthusiasms, and the contemplation of nature and of the divinity: these are the favorite subjects of poetic meditation. The poet must have only one model, nature; only one guide, truth.
