Therefore our Ennius has a right to give to
poets the epithet of Holy, [11] because they are, as it were, lent to
mankind by the indulgent bounty of the gods."
"Poetry," says Shelley, "awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering
it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought.
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes
familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that
it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand
thenceforward in the minds of those who have once contemplated them, as
memorials of that gentle and exalted content which extends itself over all
thoughts and actions with which it co-exists."
And again, "All high Poetry is infinite; it is as the first acorn, which
contained all oaks potentially. Veil after veil may be undrawn, and the
inmost naked beauty of the meaning never exposed. A great poem is a
fountain forever overflowing with the waters of wisdom and delight."
Or, as he has expressed himself in his Ode to a Skylark:
"Higher still and higher
From the earth thou springest
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.
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