The Literature of Ecstasy
wraiths of the living and phantoms of the dead, crowded and made populous the winds that blew about him, the fields and hills over which he gazed.

The second is from James Thomson's essay on Shelley:
The only true or inspired poetry is always from within, not from without. The experience contained in it has been spiritually transmuted from lead into gold. It is severely logical, the most trivial of its adornments being subservient to, and suggested by, the dominant idea; any departure from whose dictates would be the "falsifying of a revelation." It is unadulterated with worldly wisdom, deference to prevailing opinions, mere talent or cleverness. Its anguish is untainted by the gall of bitterness, its joy is never selfish, its grossness is never obscene. It perceives always the profound identity underlying all surface differences. It is a living organism, not a dead aggregate, and its music is the expression of the law of its growth; so that it could no more be set to a different melody than could a rose-tree be consummated with lilies or violets. It is most philosophic when most enthusiastic, the clearest light of its wisdom being shed from the keenest fire of its love. It is a synthesis not arithmetical, but algebraical; that is to say, its particular subjects are universal symbols, its predicates, universal laws: hence it is infinitely suggestive. It is ever-fresh wonder at the infinite mystery, ever-young faith in the eternal soul. Whatever be its mood, we feel that it is not self-possessed but God-possessed; whether the God came down serene and stately as Jove, when, a swan, he wooed Leda; or with overwhelming might insupportably burning, as when he consumed Semele.

Criticism deals with ideas that relate to life, and when written with ecstasy on human topics and not on technique it is poetry. The passage in Shelley's Defense of Poetry, beginning with the words "Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments, etc.," as well as the conclusion of Poe's essay on The Poetic Principle are poetry. The critics here were poets in their prose criticism, no less than in their rhymed lyrics.

As the reader will fathom by this time, my aim is to free poetry from its bondage to requirements that were thought essential to it. I object most emphatically to demands for rhyme, metre, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, parallelism, repetition of word or phrase or line, tropes or figures of speech, poetical diction, and any form of pattern. The poet has the right to use any of the above instruments as he sees fit, whenever he thinks they enhance the ecstasy in his work. But no critic has a right to lay down a 
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