Yes, in knowledge lies Poetry’s California!  Every one who only looks backward, and not clearly forward, will, however high and honourably he stands, say, that if such riches lie in knowledge, they would long since have been made available by great and immortal bards, who had a clear and sagacious eye for the discovery of truth.  But let us remember that when Thespis spoke from his car, the world had also wise men.  Homer had sung his immortal songs, and yet a new form of genius appeared, to which a Sophocles and Aristophanes gave birth; the Sagas and mythology of the North were as an unknown treasure to the stage, until Oehlenschlaeger showed what mighty forms from thence might be made to glide past us.

It is not our intention that the poet shall versify scientific discoveries.  The didactic poem is and will be, in its best form, always but a piece of mechanism, or wooden figure, which has not the true life.  The sunlight of science must penetrate the poet; he must perceive truth and harmony in the minute and in the immensely great with a clear eye:  it must purify and enrich the understanding and imagination, and show him new forms which will supply to him more animated words.  Even single discoveries will furnish a new flight.  What fairy tales cannot the world unfold under the microscope, if we transfer our human world thereto?  Electro-magnetism can present or suggest new plots in new comedies and romances; and how many humorous compositions will not spring forth, as we from our grain of dust, our little earth, with its little haughty beings look out into that endless world’s universe, from milky way to milky way?  An instance of what we here mean is discoverable in that old noble lady’s words:  “If every star be a globe like our earth, and have its kingdoms and courts—­what an endless number of courts—­the contemplation is enough to make mankind giddy!”

We will not say, like that French authoress:  “Now, then, let me die:  the world has no more discoveries to make!” O, there is so endlessly much in the sea, in the air, and on the earth—­wonders, which science will bring forth!—­wonders, greater than the poet’s philosophy can create!  A bard will come, who, with a child’s mind, like a new Aladdin, will enter into the cavern of science,—­with a child’s mind, we say, or else the puissant spirits of natural strength would seize him, and make him their servant; whilst he, with the lamp of poetry, which is, and always will be, the human heart, stands as a ruler, and brings forth wonderful fruits from the gloomy passages, and has strength to build poetry’s new palace, created in one night by attendant spirits.

In the world itself events repeat themselves; the human character was and will be the same during long ages and all ages; and as they were in the old writings, they must be in the new.  But science always unfolds something new; light and truth are everything that is created—­beam out from hence with eternally divine clearness.  Mighty image of God, do thou illumine and enlighten mankind; and when its intellectual eye is accustomed to the lustre, the new Aladdin will come, and thou, man, shalt with him, who concisely dear, and richly sings the beauty of truth, wander through Poetry’s California.