But
poetry acts in another and diviner manner. It awakens and enlarges the
mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended
combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty
of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not
familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations
clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those
who have once contemplated them as memorials of that gentle and exalted
content which extends itself over all thoughts and actions with which
it coexists. The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our
nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which
exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly
good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself
in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures
of his species must become his own. The great instrument of moral good
is the imagination; and poetry administers to the effect by acting
upon the cause.
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