It begins at the imagination
and the intellect as at the core, and distributes itself thence as a
paralysing venom, through the affections into the very appetites, until
all become a torpid mass in which hardly sense survives. At the approach
of such a period, poetry ever addresses itself to those faculties which
are the last to be destroyed, and its voice is heard, like the footsteps
of Astraa, departing from the world. Poetry ever communicates all the
pleasure which men are capable of receiving: it is ever still the light
of life; the source of whatever of beautiful or generous or true can
have place in an evil time. It will readily be confessed that those
among the luxurious citizens of Syracuse and Alexandria, who were
delighted with the poems of Theocritus, were less cold, cruel, and
sensual than the remnant of their tribe. But corruption must utterly
have destroyed the fabric of human society before poetry can ever
cease. The sacred links of that chain have never been entirely
disjointed, which descending through the minds of many men is attached
to those great minds, whence as from a magnet the invisible effluence
is sent forth, which at once connects, animates, and sustains the life
of all.
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