which the poet gives utterance may be altogether unobjectionable in themselves, and yet their introduction may have the effect of ruining his poetry in the estimation of all competent judges. So delicate a thing is poetical composition, that a poet is almost sure to mar the effect of his best creations whenever he attempts to mix up mere subjective feeling with the objective ideas of beauty and sublimity which are imparting their own tenderness and their own grandeur to his compositions. As an instance of this, let me read to you the following passage from Lord Byron, descriptive of the Cataract of Velino:—
" The roar of waters I—from the headlong height
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice;
The fall of waters! rapid as the light
The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss;
The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss,
And boil in endless torture; while the sweat
Of their great agony, wrung out from this
Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet
That guard the gulf around, in pitiless horror set,
" And mounts in spray the skies, and thence again
Returns in an unceasing shower, which round,
With its unemptied cloud of gentle rain,
Is an eternal April to the ground,
Making it all one emerald:—how profound
The gulf! and how the giant element
From rock to rock leaps with delirious bound,
Crushing the cliffs, which, downward worn and rent
With his fierce footsteps, yield in chasms a fearful rent.
" To the broad column which rolls on, and shows
More like the fountain of an infant sea
Torn from the womb of mountains by the throes
Of a new world, than only thus to be
Parent of rivers, which flow gushingly,
With many windings, through the vale:—Look back!
