Those who cannot tell what they desire or
expect, still sigh and struggle with indefinite thoughts and vast
wishes. The very child in the nursery prattles mysticism, and doubts
and philosophizes. A wild striving to express a more inward and
infinite sense characterizes the works of every art. The music of
Beethoven is said by those who understand it, to labor with vaster
conceptions and aspirations than music has attempted before. This
Feeling of the Infinite has deeply colored the poetry of the period.
This new love of the vast, always native in Germany, was imported
into France by De Stael, appeared in England in Coleridge,
Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Felicia Hemans, and finds a most genial
climate in the American mind. Scott and Crabbe, who formed
themselves on the past, had none of this tendency; their poetry is
objective. In Byron, on the other hand, it predominates; but in
Byron it is blind, it sees not its true end -- an infinite good,
alive and beautiful, a life nourished on absolute beatitudes,
descending into nature to behold itself reflected there. His will is
perverted, he worships the accidents of society, and his praise of
nature is thieving and selfish.
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