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INTEODUCTOEY ESSAY. 7
all things in their absolute truth,—an ultimate
view ever aspired to, if but partially attained,
by the poet's own soul.
Not what man sees,
but what God sees—the Ideas of Plato, seeds
of creation lying burningly on the Divine
Hand—^it is toward these that he struggles.
Not with the combination of humanity in
action, but with the primal
elements of
humanity he has to do ; and he digs where
he stands,—preferring to seek them in his own
soul as the nearest reflex of that absolute
Mind, according to the intuitions of which he
desires to perceive and speak.
Such a poet
does not deal habitually with the picturesque
groupings and tempestuous tossings of the
forest-trees, but with their roots and fibres
naked to the chalk and stone.
He does not
paint pictures and hang them on the walls,
but rather carries them on the retina of his
own eyes : we must look deep into his human
eyes, to see those pictures on them.
He is