text:  What wonder since the poet in forms given by imagination embodies the profoundest the loftiest the tenderest the innermost acts and movements of that soul which lives in every human bosom? What wonder if each of us loves the poet when in his work as in a celestial mirror each of us beholds _himself_ naturally and truly pictured and yet ennobled? What wonder if the nation proud of itself of its position and of its memories exalts its own darling son of song who may have fixed in a precious throng of imperishable words the peculiar spirit of thinking of loving of daring which has made the nation what it has been is and hopes long to be? What wonder if humankind when mighty ages have departed and languages once cultivated in their beauty have ceased from being spoken should bring across lands and seas crowns of undying laurels to cast at the feet of some awful poet who cannot die? In whose true capacious and prophetic mind the coming civilization of his own people was long beforehand anticipated and predisposed? And in whose antique verse we the offspring of other ages and tongues and races drink still the freshly-flowing and ever-living waters of original and unexhausted humanity? Oh! how shall such strains as these in which each single word and syllable has in itself a spell more potent by its position survive in undiminished force and beauty the art that would fain spirit them away out of one language which they have breathed all life long into another which they have to learn to love? Lived there ever such a magician? Never