A pessimistic poet, like the poisonous ivy, is one of nature's sarcasms.
In his own bright pastoral way Herrick must always remain unexcelled.
His limitations are certainly narrow, but they leave him in the
sunshine. Neither in his thought nor in his utterance is there any
complexity; both are as pellucid as a woodland pond, content to
duplicate the osiers and ferns, and, by chance, the face of a girl
straying near its crystal. His is no troubled stream in which large
trout are caught. He must be accepted on his own terms.
The greatest poets have, with rare exceptions, been the most indebted
to their predecessors or to their contemporaries. It has wittily been
remarked that only mediocrity is ever wholly original. Impressionability
is one of the conditions of the creative faculty: the sensitive mind is
the only mind that invents. What the poet reads, sees, and feels, goes
into his blood, and becomes an ingredient of his originality. The
color of his thought instinctively blends itself with the color of its
affinities.
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