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THE POETIC PRINCIPLE
IN speaking of the Poetic Principle, I have no design to be either
thorough or profound. While discussing, very much at random, the
essentiality of what we call Poetry, my principal purpose will be to
cite for consideration, some few of those minor English or American
poems which best suit my own taste, or which, upon my own fancy, have
left the most definite impression. By "minor poems" I mean, of course,
poems of little length. And here, in the beginning, permit me to say
a few words in regard to a somewhat peculiar principle, which, whether
rightfully or wrongfully, has always had its influence in my own
critical estimate of the poem. I hold that a long poem does not exist. I
maintain that the phrase, "a long poem," is simply a flat contradiction
in terms.
I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as
it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio
of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, through a psychal
necessity, transient. That degree of excitement which would entitle
a poem to be so called at all, cannot be sustained throughout a
composition of any great length. After the lapse of half an hour, at the
very utmost, it flags--fails--a revulsion ensues--and then the poem is,
in effect, and in fact, no longer such.
There are, no doubt, many who have found difficulty in reconciling
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