Enveloped in
the panoply of patriotism, truth and goodness, he may well defy the
harmless darts of angry criticism and invective, emanating from writers
who are foreign in blood, language, sympathy and taste. When the Greeks
delighted in their olympic games of running for a laurel crown, the
Romans witnessed with savage pleasure the deadly contentions of their
gladiators, the Spaniards gazed with joy on their bloody bull fights, and
the English crowded to look at the horse race or prize fight, the Cymry
met peaceably in the recesses of their beautiful valleys and mountains to
rehearse the praises of religion and virtue, to sing the merits of
beauty, truth and goodness, and all heightened by the melodious strains
of their national lyre.
It is often asked, what is poetry? Prose, we assume to be a simple or
connected narrative of ordinary facts or common circumstances. Poetry,
on the other hand, is a grouping of great, grand or beautiful objects in
nature, or of fierce, fine or lofty passions, or beautiful sentiments, or
pretty ideas of the human heart or mind, and all these premises expressed
in suitable or becoming language.
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