Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural fruit.  As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done.  It is the chief and most memorable success, for history is but a prose narrative of poetic deeds.  What else have the Hindoos, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians done, that can be told?  It is the simplest relation of phenomena, and describes the commonest sensations with more truth than science does, and the latter at a distance slowly mimics its style and methods.  The poet sings how the blood flows in his veins.  He performs his functions, and is so well that he needs such stimulus to sing only as plants to put forth leaves and blossoms.  He would strive in vain to modulate the remote and transient music which he sometimes hears, since his song is a vital function like breathing, and an integral result like weight.  It is not the overflowing of life but its subsidence rather, and is drawn from under the feet of the poet.  It is enough if Homer but say the sun sets.  He is as serene as nature, and we can hardly detect the enthusiasm of the bard.  It is as if nature spoke.  He presents to us the simplest pictures of human life, so the child itself can understand them, and the man must not think twice to appreciate his naturalness.  Each reader discovers for himself that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeeding poets have done little else than copy his similes.  His more memorable passages are as naturally bright as gleams of sunshine in misty weather.  Nature furnishes him not only with words, but with stereotyped lines and sentences from her mint.

   “As from the clouds appears the full moon,
   All shining, and then again it goes behind the shadowy clouds,
   So Hector, at one time appeared among the foremost,
   And at another in the rear, commanding; and all with brass
   He shone, like to the lightning of aegis-bearing Zeus.”

He conveys the least information, even the hour of the day, with such magnificence and vast expense of natural imagery, as if it were a message from the gods.

   “While it was dawn, and sacred day was advancing,
   For that space the weapons of both flew fast, and the people fell;
   But when now the woodcutter was preparing his morning meal,
   In the recesses of the mountain, and had wearied his hands
   With cutting lofty trees, and satiety came to his mind,
   And the desire of sweet food took possession of his thoughts;
   Then the Danaans, by their valor, broke the phalanxes,
   Shouting to their companions from rank to rank.”

When the army of the Trojans passed the night under arms, keeping watch lest the enemy should re-embark under cover of the dark,