The breeze-the breath of God-is still And the mist upon the hill Shadowy-shadowy-yet unbroken, Is a symbol and a token— How it hangs upon the trees, TO HELEN. ELEN, thy beauty is to me Like those Nicean barks of yore, That gently, o'er a perfumed sea, The weary, way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche ALONE. ROM childhood's hour I have not been As others saw-I could not bring My passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken And the cloud that took the form THE POETIC PRINCIPLE. IN speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to cite for consideration some few of those minor English or American poems which best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have left the most definite impression. By "minor poems" I mean, of course, poems of little length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I maintain that the phrase a long poem " is simply a flat contra diction in terms. I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle a poem to be so called at all cannot be |