burns within their words. They measure the circumference
and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive
and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves
perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations;
for it is less their spirit than the spirit of the
age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended
inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which
futurity casts upon the present; the words which express
what they understand not; the trumpets which sing
to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the influence
which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the
unacknowledged legislators of the world.