Those of us (and they are many) who owe a great debt
of gratitude to the German spirit and to German literature, do not
like to be told of any powers being lacking there; we are like the
young ladies who think the hero of their novel is only half a hero
unless he has all perfections united in him. But nature does not
work, either in heroes or races, according to the young ladies'
notion. We all are what we are, the hero and the great nation are
what they are, by our limitations as well as by our powers, by
lacking something as well as by possessing something. It is not
always gain to possess this or that gift, or loss to lack this or
that gift. Our great, our only first-rate body of contemporary
poetry is the German; the grand business of modern poetry,--a moral
interpretation, from an independent point of view, of man and the
world,--it is only German poetry, Goethe's poetry, that has, since
the Greeks, made much way with. Campbell's power of style, and the
natural magic of Keats and Wordsworth, and Byron's Titanic
personality, may be wanting to this poetry; but see what it has
accomplished without them! How much more than Campbell with his
power of style, and Keats and Wordsworth with their natural magic,
and Byron with his Titanic personality! Why, for the immense serious
task it had to perform, the steadiness of German poetry, its going
near the ground, its patient fidelity to nature, its using great
plainness of speech, poetical drawbacks in one point of view, were
safeguards and helps in another.
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