Explore "Art and Heart" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Though critics may bow to art, and I am its own true lover, / It is not art, but _heart_, which wins the wide world over.
Though smooth be the heartless prayer, no ear in Heaven will mind it, / And the finest phrase falls dead if there is no feeling behind it.
Though perfect the player's touch, little, if any, he sways us, / Unless we feel his heart throb through the music he plays us.
Though the poet may spend his life in skilfully rounding a measure, / Unless he writes from a full, warm heart he gives us little pleasure.
So it is not the speech which tells, but the impulse which goes / with the saying; / And it is not the words of the prayer, but the yearning back of / the praying.
It is not the artist's skill which into our soul comes stealing / With a joy that is almost pain, but it is the player's feeling.
And it is not the poet's song, though sweeter than sweet bells chiming, / Which thrills us through and through, but the heart which beats under / the rhyming.
And therefore I say again, though I am art's own true lover, / That it is not art, but heart, which wins the wide world over.