But it seems to be thought that we have come upon the earth too late, that there has been a feast of imagination formerly, and all that is left for us is to steal the scraps.  We hear that there is no poetry in railroads and steamboats and telegraphs, and especially none in Brother Jonathan.  If this be true, so much the worse for him.  But because he is a materialist, shall there be no more poets?  When we have said that we live in a materialistic age we have said something which meant more than we intended.  If we say it in the way of blame, we have said a foolish thing, for probably one age is as good as another, and, at any rate, the worst is good enough company for us.  The age of Shakespeare was richer than our own, only because it was lucky enough to have such a pair of eyes as his to see it, and such a gift of speech as his to report it.  And so there is always room and occasion for the poet, who continues to be, just as he was in the early time, nothing more nor less than a “seer.”  He is always the man who is willing to take the age he lives in on trust, as the very best that ever was.  Shakespeare did not sit down and cry for the water of Helicon to turn the wheels of his little private mill at the Bankside.  He appears to have gone more quietly about his business than any other playwright in London, to have drawn off what water-power he needed from the great prosy current of affairs that flows alike for all and in spite of all, to have ground for the public what grist they wanted, coarse or fine, and it seems a mere piece of luck that the smooth stream of his activity reflected with such ravishing clearness every changing mood of heaven and earth, every stick and stone, every dog and clown and courtier that stood upon its brink.  It is a curious illustration of the friendly manner in which Shakespeare received everything that came along,—­of what a present man he was,—­that in the very same year that the mulberry-tree was brought into England, he got one and planted it in his garden at Stratford.

It is perfectly true that this is a materialistic age, and for that very reason we want our poets all the more.  We find that every generation contrives to catch its singing larks without the sky’s falling.  When the poet comes, he always turns out to be the man who discovers that the passing moment is the inspired one, and that the secret of poetry is not to have lived in Homer’s day, or Dante’s, but to be alive now.  To be alive now, that is the great art and mystery.  They are dead men who live in the past, and men yet unborn that live in the future.  We are like Hans in Luck, forever exchanging the burdensome good we have for something else, till at last we come home empty-handed.