Into lonely prisons with improvident artists; into convents from which arose, day and night, the holy hymns with which its tones were blended; and back again to orgies in which it learned to howl and laugh as if a legion of devils were shut up in it; then again to the gentle dilettante who calmed it down with easy melodies until it answered him softly as in the days of the old maestros.

And so given into our hands, its pores all full of music; stained, like the meerschaum, through and through, with the concentrated hue and sweetness of all the harmonies which have kindled and faded on its strings.
Now I tell you a poem must be kept AND USED, like a meerschaum, or a violin.

A poem is just as porous as the meerschaum;--the more porous it is, the better.

I mean to say that a genuine poem is capable of absorbing an indefinite amount of the essence of our own humanity,--its tenderness, its heroism, its regrets, its aspirations, so as to be gradually stained through with a divine secondary color derived from ourselves.

So you see it must take time to bring the sentiment of a poem into harmony with our nature, by staining ourselves through every thought and image our being can penetrate.
Then again as to the mere music of a new poem; why, who can expect anything more from that than from the music of a violin fresh from the maker's hands?
Now you know very well that there are no less than fifty-eight different pieces in a violin.