The difference between the two is seen in nothing more clearly than in
the fact that so many educated persons can and do write fairly good
verse, in fact, write most of the popular newspaper and magazine
poetry, while only those who have a genius for poetry write real
poems. Could mere talent have written Bryant's lines "To a Waterfowl"?
or his "Thanatopsis"? or "June"? Or the small volume of selections of
great poetry which Arnold made from the massive works of Wordsworth?
Talent could have produced a vast deal of Wordsworth's work--all the
"Ecclesiastical Sonnets" and much of "The Excursion." Could talent
have written Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass"? It could have produced
all that Whitman wrote before that time--all his stories and poems.
Give talent inspiration and it becomes genius. The grub is
metamorphosed into the butterfly.
"To do what is impossible to Talent is the mark of Genius," says
Amiel.
Talent may judge, Genius creates. Talent keeps the rules, Genius knows
when to break them.
"You may know Genius," says the ironical Swift, "by this sign: All the
dunces are against him."
There is fine talent in Everett's oration at Gettysburg, but what a
different quality spoke in Lincoln's brief but immortal utterance on
the same occasion! Is anything more than bright, alert talent shown in
the mass of Lowell's work, save perhaps in his "Biglow Papers"? If he
had a genius for poetry, though he wrote much, I cannot see it. His
tone, as Emerson said, is always that of prose. The "Cathedral" is a
_tour de force_. The line of his so often quoted--"What is so rare as
a day in June?"--is a line of prose.
The lines "To a Honey Bee" by John Russell McCarthy are the true gold
of poetry. "To make of labor an eternal lust" could never have been
struck off by mere talent.