V The Poet. (132)
William Ellery Channing, 1780-1842, was a distinguished clergyman and orator. He took a leading part in the public affairs of his day, and wrote and lectured eloquently on several topics. ###
It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life’s ethereal essence, arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but evanescent joys; and in this he does well, for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence and physical gratifications, but admits, in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being.