Last words of Thomas Carlyle - Warburg Institute

tooWOTTON l^EINFREDdust before the whirlwind. Thus you too believe inthe reality of the invisible, nay, in its chief or solereality ;yes, you and all of us, else were we machinesnot men ; more cunningly devised steam-engines, tomanufactm-e and to be impelled ;to make and to will.'not reasonable souls,'But what has this to do with poetry ? ' saidWilliams.'In our view it has much to do with moral goodness,'answered Maurice, and * therefore with the poetwho is the interpreter and shadower forth of goodness.Except on some such principle, consciously or, it maybe, unconsciously adopted, I see not how he is to findfirm footing ; for it is only by a sense of the invisiblethat we can clearly understand the visible, that welearn to tolerate it, nay, to love it and see its worthamid its worthlessness.'archly :*These are hard sayings,' rejoined the other,'Whocan understand them ? I question butthat blackbird that sits on the hawthorn-tree, singingits carol in the red sunlight, is a better poet in its waythan any of us.'*The perfection., of poets,' answered Mam-ice,*would be a man as harmonious and complete in hisreasonable being as that bh'd in itsinstinctive being.''The blackbird, at least, is born not made,' saidWilliams ;'is it not so also of the poet ? ''Born and made were perhaps truer of the poet,'answered Maurice. * Nature in her bounty gives hiK