1 Introduction. ON THE POETRY OF BYRON. POETRY is the expression, in measured and harmonious language, of those thoughts and feelings which are awakened by the contemplation of whatever is beautiful, affecting, or sublime. The materials of poetry are found in the inexhaustable storehouse of nature, in the productions of human art, and in the ever-varying occurrences of human life. The sentiment may sometimes want its appropriate vehicle; or the outward form, the mere verse, may exist without the spirit of poetry, which feeling and genius alone can impart. Poetry, which is preeminently the offspring of imagination, enlists in her service all the other faculties of the soul; and Science and Philosophy may become her handmaids. Poetry not only holds communion with the present and the visible, but brings near the distant, calls up the departed, and realizes the unseen and the eternal. There is, therefore a close affinity between poetry and the sentiment of religion and immortality. "Poetry," says Byron, "is the feeling of a former world—and of a future." In the following poem those two great contemporary powers, Byron and Bonaparte, are compared (Canto iii. stanzas 71-73). What Napoleon was in war, Byron was in poetry. To each of them |
