Therefore it is that the mythological poetry of
the ancients is as cold as it is beautiful, as unaffecting as it is
faultless....
"The admirers of poetry, then, may give up the ancient mythology
without a sigh. Its departure has left us what is better than all
it has taken away: it has left us men and women; it has left us the
creatures and things of God's universe, to the simple charm of which
the cold splendor of that system blinded men's eyes, and to the
magnificence of which the rapid progress of science is every day
adding new wonders and glories. It has left us, also, a more sublime
and affecting religion, whose truths are broader, higher, nobler than
any outlook to which its random conjectures ever attained."
Yet, after all, returning from this consideration of poetic themes
to the question of the poetic principle itself; we may find a sturdy
assertion of it in a few words by Edgar Allan Poe--perhaps the most
acute of the many debaters of this apparently simple yet evasive
problem. After discussing the elements of poetry in music, painting,
and other art, Poe writes:
"I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as the Rhythmical
Creation of Beauty! Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect,
or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless
incidentally, it has no concern whatever with Duty or with Truth.
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