The Potter journal. [volume] (Coudersport, Pa.) 1857-1872, 1859-03-24
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ed people talk as if poets and noselists
made romance. They do,-just as much
as craters make volcanoes no more.
What is romance whence comes il?
Plato spoke to the subject wisely, In his
quaint way, some two thousand years ago,
when he said, Mans soul, in former
state, was winged and scared among the
gods and 50 it comes to pass, that, in this
life, when the soul. by the power of music
or poetry, or the sight Of beauty, hathher
remembrance quickened, forthwith there
is a struggling and pricking pain as of
wings trying to come forth,-even as chill
dren in teething. And il an o i heather,
two thousand years ago, discoursed thus
grayely Of the romantic part of our nature,
whence comes it that in Christian lands
we think in so pagan way oft, and turn
the whole care of it to ballad makers, ro-
mancers, and opera-singers
" Let US look up in fear and reverence
and say, God is the great maker of ro-
nance He, from whose hand came man
and woman,-UE, who strung the great
harp of Existence with all its wild and
wonderful and manifold chords, and at
tuned them TO one another,-HE is the
great Poet Of life Every impulse Of
beauty, Of heroism, and every craving for
purer love, falrer perfection, nobler type
and style Of being than that which closes
like a prison-house around US, in the dim,
daily walk of life, is Gods breath, Gods
impulse, Gods reminder to the soul that
there is something higher, sweeter, purer,
yet to be attained.
"Therefore, man or woman, when thy
ideal is shattered,- as shattered thou
sand times it must be,-when the vision
fades, the rapture burns out, turn not
away in skePucism and bitterness, saying,
/ There Is nothing better for man than
that he should eat and drink, but rather
cherish the revelation of those hours as
prophecies and foreshadowings of some
thing real aud possible, yet to be attained
in the manhood Of Immortality. The
scohfng spirit that laughs at romance is an
apple of the Devils own handing from
the bitter tree of knowledge 1T opens
the eyes only to see eternal nakedness.
"lf ever YOU have had a romantic, un-
calculating friendship,-a boundless wor-
ship and belief in some hero of your soul,
If ever you have so loved, that all cold
prudence, all selfish worldly considera-
tions have gone down like drlft-wood be-
fore river flooded with new rain from
heaven, SO that you even forgot yourself,
and were ready to cast your whole being
into the chasm Of existence, as an offer
ing before the feet of another, and all for
nothing,-if you awoke bitterly betrayed
and deceived, still give thanks to God that
you have had one glimpse of heaven. The
door now shut will open again. Rejoice
that the noblest capability of your eternal
inheritance has been made known to you;
treasure it, as the highest honor of your
being, that ever you could so feel,-that
50 divine guest ever possessed your soul.
BY such experiences are we taught
the pathos, the sacredness of life; and if
we use them wisely, our eyes will ever
after be anointed to see what poems, what
romances, what sublime tragedies lie around
us in the daily walk of life, written not
with ink, but in heshly tables of the heart
The dullest street Of the most prosaic town
has matter in it for more smiles, more
tears, more intense excitement, than ever
were written in story or sung in poem ;
the reality is there, of which the romancer
is the secondhand recorder.
So much Of plea we put in boldly,
because we foresee grave heads begin to
shake over our history, and doubts rising
in reverend and discreet minds whether
this history is going to prove anything but
a loye-story, after all"