Authors:
  • The source of each accordant strain
    Lies deeper than the Poet's brain.
    First from the people's heart must spring
    The passions which he learns to sing;
    They are the wind, the harp is he,
    To voice their fitful melody,--
    The language of their varying fate,
    Their pride, grief, love, ambition, hate,--
    The talisman which holds inwrought
    The touchstone of the listener's thought;
    That penetrates each vain disguise,
    And brings his secret to his eyes.

    Bayard Taylor (1866). “The Poems”, p.111