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POETRY

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Originally appearing in Volume V21, Page 890 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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POETRY  . In See also:

modern See also:criticism the word poetry (i.e. the See also:art of the poet, Gr.7folrtrns, maker, from 7rote?v, to make) is used sometimes to denote any expression (See also:artistic or other) of imaginative feeling, sometimes to designate a precise See also:literary art, which ranks as one of the See also:fine arts . As an expression of imaginative feeling, as the See also:movement of an See also:energy, as one of those See also:great primal human forces which go to the development of the See also:race, poetry in the wide sense has played as important a See also:part as See also:science . In some literatures (such as that of See also:England) poetic energy and in others (such as that of See also:Rome) poetic art is the dominant quality . It is the same with individual writers . In classical literature See also:Pindar may perhaps be taken as a type of the poets of energy; See also:Virgil of the poets of art . With all his See also:wealth of poetic art Pindar's mastery over symmetrical methods never taught him to " sow with the See also:hand," as See also:Corinna declared, while his poetic energy always impelled him to " sow with the whole See also:sack." In See also:English poetical literature See also:Elizabeth See also:Barrett See also:Browning typifies, perhaps, the poets of energy; while See also:Keats (notwithstanding all his unquestionable See also:inspiration) is mostly taken as a type of the poets of art . In See also:French literature See also:Hugo, notwithstanding all his mastery over poetic methods, represents the poets of energy . In some writers, and these the very greatest—in See also:Homer, See also:Aeschylus, See also:Sophocles, See also:Dante, See also:Shakespeare, See also:Milton, and perhaps See also:Goethe—poetic energy and poetic art are seen in something like equipoise . It is of poetry as an art, however, that we have mainly to speak here; and all we have to say upon poetry as an energy is that the critic who, like See also:Aristotle, takes this wide view of poetry—the critic who, like him, recognizes the importance of poetry in its relations to See also:man's other expressions of spiritual force, claims a See also:place in point of true See also:critical sagacity above that of a critic who, like See also:Plato, fails to recognize that importance . And assuredly no See also:philosophy of See also:history can be other than in-adequate should it ignore the fact that poetry has had as much effect upon human destiny as that other great human energy by aid of which, from the See also:discovery of the use of See also:fire to that of the electric See also:light, the useful arts have been See also:developed . With regard to poetry as an art, most of the great poems of the See also:world are dealt with elsewhere in this See also:work, either in connexion with the names of the writers or with the various literatures to which they belong; consequently these remarks must be confined to See also:general principles .

Under See also:

VERSE the detailed questions of See also:prosody are considered; here we are concerned with the essential principles which underlie the meaning of poetry as such . All that can be attempted is to inquire: (I) What is poetry ? (2) What is the position it takes up in relation to the other arts ? (3) What is its value and degree of expressional See also:power in relation to these? and, finally, (4) What varieties of poetic art are the outcome of the two great kinds of poetic impulse, dramatic See also:imagination and lyric or egoistic imagination ? r . What is Poetry?—See also:Definitions are for the most part alike unsatisfactory and treacherous; but definitions of poetry are proverbially so . Is it possible to See also:lay down invariable principlesof poetry, such as those famous " invariable principles " of See also:William See also:Lisle See also:Bowles, which in the earlier part of the See also:century awoke the admiration of See also:Southey and the wrath See also:Definition. of See also:Byron ? Is it possible for a critic to say of any metrical phrase, See also:stanza or verse, " This is poetry," or " This is not poetry" ? Can he, with anything like the authority with which the man of science pronounces upon the natural See also:objects brought before him, pronounce upon the qualities of a poem ? These are questions that have engaged the See also:attention of critics ever since the See also:time of Aristotle . Byron, in his rough and ready way, answered them in one of those letters to his publisher See also:John See also:Murray, which, See also:rich as they are in nonsense, are almost as rich in sense . " So far are principles of poetry from being invariable," says he, " that they never were nor ever will be settled .

These principles mean nothing more than the predilections of a particular See also:

age, and every age has its own and a different from its predecessor . It is now Homer and now Virgil; once See also:Dryden and since See also:Sir See also:Walter See also:Scott; now See also:Corneille and now See also:Racine.; now See also:Crebillon and now See also:Voltaire." This is putting the See also:case very strongly—perhaps too strongly . But if we remember that Sophocles lost the first See also:prize for the See also:Oedipus tyrannus; if we remember what in Dante's time (owing partly, no doubt, to the universal See also:ignorance of See also:Greek) were the relative positions of Homer and Virgil, what in the time of Milton were the relative positions of Milton himself, of Shakespeare, and of See also:Beaumont and See also:Fletcher; again, if we remember See also:Jeffrey's famous See also:classification of the poets of his See also:day, we shall be driven to pause over Byron's words before dismissing them . Yet some definition, for the purpose of this See also:essay, must be here attempted; and, using . the phrase " See also:absolute poetry " as the musical critics use the phrase " absolute See also:music," we may, perhaps, without too great presumption submit the following: Absolute poetry is the See also:concrete and artistic expression of the human mind in emotional and rhythmical See also:language . This at least will be granted, that no literary expression can, properly speaking, be called poetry that is not in a certain deep sense emotional, whatever may be its subject-See also:matter, concrete in its method and its diction, rhythmical in movement, and artistic in See also:form . That the expression of all real poetry must be concrete in method and diction is obvious, and yet this dictum would exclude from the definition much of what is called didactic poetry . With abstractions the poet has nothing to do, See also:save to take them and turn them into concretions; for, as artist, he is simply the man who by See also:instinct embodies in concrete forms that " universal See also:idea" which See also:Gravina speaks of—that which is essential and elemental in nature and in man; as poetic artist he is simply the man who by instinct chooses for his concrete forms metrical language . And the questions to be asked concerning any work of art are simply these—Is that which is here embodied really permanent, universal and elemental? and, Is the concrete form embodying it really beautiful—acknowledged as beautiful by the soul of man in its highest moods ? Any other question is an impertinence . As an example of the See also:absence of concrete form in verse take the following lines from See also:George See also:Eliot's See also:Spanish Gypsy: " Speech is but broken light upon the See also:depth Of the unspoken; even your loved words See also:Float in the larger meaning of your See also:voice As something dimmer." Without discussing the question of See also:blank verse, See also:cadence. and the weakness of a See also:line where the See also:main See also:accent falls upon a See also:positive See also:hiatus, " of the unspoken," we would point out that this powerful passage shows the spirit of poetry without its concrete form . The abstract method is substituted for the concrete . Such an abstract phrase as " the unspoken " belongs entirely to See also:prose .

As to what is called ratiocinative poetry, it might perhaps be shown that it does not exist at all . Not by See also:

syllogism, but per saltum, must the poet reach in every case his conclusions . We listen to the poet—we allow him to address us in See also:rhythm or in See also:rhyme—we allow him to sing to us while other men are only allowed to talk, not because he argues more logically than they, but because he feels more deeply and perhaps more truly . It is for his listeners to be knowing and ratiocinative; it is for him to be gnomic and divinely See also:wise . That poetry must be metrical or even rhythmical in movement, however, is what some have denied . Here we See also:touch at once the very See also:root of the subject . The difference between all literature and See also:mere " word-kneading " is that, while literature is alive, word-kneading is without See also:life . This literary life, while it is only See also:bipartite in prose, seems to be tripartite in poetry; that is to say, while prose requires intellectual life and emotional life, poetry seems to require not only intellectual life and emotional life but rhythmic life, this last being the most important of all according to many critics, though Aristotle is not among these . Here indeed is the " See also:fork " between the old critics and the new . Unless the rhythm of any metrical passage is so vigorous, so natural, and so See also:free that it seems as though it could live, if need were, by its rhythm alone, has that passage any right to exist? and should it not, if the substance is See also:good, be forthwith demetricized and turned into prose ? See also:Thoreau has affirmed that prose, at its best, has high qualities of its own beyond the See also:ken of poetry; to compensate for the See also:sacrifice of these, should not the metrical gains of any passage be beyond all cavil ? This See also:argument might be pressed farther still .

It might seem bold to assert that, in many cases, the See also:

mental value of poetry may actually depend upon form and See also:colour, but would it not be true ? The mental value of poetry must be judged by a See also:standard not applicable to prose; but, even with regard to the different kinds of poetry, we must not compare poetry whose mental value consists in a distinct and logical enunciation of ideas, such as that of See also:Lucretius and See also:Wordsworth, and poetry whose mental value consists partly in the suggestive richness of See also:passion or See also:symbol latent in rhythm (such as that of See also:Sappho sometimes, Pindar often, See also:Shelley always), or latent in colour, such as that of some of the importance See also:Persian poets . To discuss the question, Which of these of Metrical twe kinds of poetry is the more See also:precious ? would be Questions, idle, but are we not driven to admit that certain poems whose strength is rhythm, and certain other poems whose strength is colour, while devoid of any logical statement of thought, may be as fruitful of thoughts and emotions too deep for words as a shaken See also:prism is fruitful of tinted See also:lights ? The mental forces at work in the See also:production of a poem like the Excursion are of a very different See also:kind from the mental forces at work in the production of a poem like Shelley's "See also:Ode to the See also:West See also:Wind." In the one case the poet's artistic methods, like those of the Greek architect, show, and are intended to show, the solid strength of the structure . In the other, the poet's artistic methods, like those of the Arabian architect, contradict the idea of solid strength—make the structure appear to hang over our heads like the See also:cloud pageantry of See also:heaven . But, in both cases, the solid strength is, and must be, there, at the See also:base . Before the poet begins to write he should ask himself which of these artistic methods is natural to him; he should ask himself whether his natural impulse is towards the weighty See also:iambic movement whose See also:primary See also:function is to See also:state, or towards those lighter movements which we still See also:call, for want of more convenient words, anapaestic and dactylic, whose primary function is to suggest . Whenever Wordsworth and Keats pass from the former to the latter they pass at once into doggerel . Nor is it difficult to see why English anapaestic and dactylic verse must suggest, and not state, as even so comparatively successful a tour de force as Shelley's " Sensitive Plant " shows . Conciseness is a primary virtue of all statement . The moment the English poet tries to " See also:pack " his anapaestic or dactylic line as he can pack his iambic line, his versification becomes rugged, harsh, pebbly—becomes so of See also:necessity . Nor is this all: anapaestic and dactylic verse must in English be obtrusively alliterative, or the same pebbly effect begins to be See also:felt .

The anapaestic line is so full of syllables that in a language where the consonants dominate the vowels (as in English), these syllables See also:

grate against each other, unless their corners are artfully bevelled by one of the only two smoothing processes at the command of an English versifier —obtrusive See also:alliteration, or an obtrusive use of liquids . Now these demands of form may be turned by the perfect artist to good See also:account if his See also:appeal to the listener's soul is primarily that of See also:suggestion by See also:sound or symbol, but if his appeal is that of See also:direct and logical statement the diffuseness inseparable from good anapaestic and dactylic verse is a source of weakness such as the true artist should find intolerable . Using the word " form " in a wider sense still, a sense that includes " See also:composition," it can be shown that poetry, to be entitled to the name, must be artistic in form . Whether a poem be a Welsh triban or a stornello improvised by an See also:Italian See also:peasant girl,whether it be an ode by Keats or a tragedy by Sophocles, it is equally a work of art . The artist's command over form may be shown in the peasant girl's power of spontaneously rendering in See also:simple verse, in her stornello or rispetto, her emotions through nature's symbols; it may be shown by Keats in that perfect See also:fusion of all poetic elements of which he was such amaster, in the manipulation of language so beautiful both for form and colour that thought and words seem but one blended loveliness; or it may be shown by Sophocles in a mastery over what in See also:painting is called composition, in the exercise of that wise See also:vision of the artist which, looking before and after, See also:sees the thing of beauty as a whole, and enables him to grasp the eternal See also:laws of cause and effect in art and See also:bend them to his own wizard will . In every case, indeed, form is an essential part of poetry; and, although George See also:Sand's saying that " L'art est une forme " applies perhaps more strictly to the plastic arts (where the soul is reached partly through See also:mechanical means), its application to poetry can hardly be exaggerated . Owing, however, to the fact that the word 700p-is (first used to designate the poetic artist by See also:Herodotus) means maker, Aristotle seems to have assumed that the indispensable basis of poetry is invention . He appears to have thought that a poet is a poet more on account of the composition of the See also:action than on account of the composition of his verses . Indeed he said as much as this . Of epic poetry he declared emphatically that it produces its imitations either by mere articulate words or by See also:metre superadded . This is to widen the definition of poetry so as to include all imaginative literature, and Plato seems to have given an equally wide meaning to the word iroinoas . Only, while Aristotle considered rroi,ves to be an See also:imitation of the facts of nature, Plato considered it to be an imitation of the dreams of man .

Aristotle ignored, and Plato slighted, the importance of versification (though Plato on one occasion admitted that he who did not know rhythm could be called neither musician nor poet) . Perhaps the first critic who tacitly revolted against the dictum that substance, and not form, is the indispensable basis of poetry was See also:

Dionysius of See also:Halicarnassus, whose See also:treatise upon the arrangement of words is really a very fine piece of literary criticism . In his acute remarks upon the arrangement of the words in the sixteenth See also:book of the Odyssey, as compared with that in the See also:story of See also:Gyges by Herodotus, was perhaps first enunciated clearly the See also:doctrine that poetry is fundamentally a matter of See also:style . The Aristotelian theory as to invention, however, dominated all criticism after as well as before Dionysius . When See also:Bacon came to discuss the subject (and afterwards) the only See also:division between the poetical critics was perhaps between the followers of Aristotle and those of Plato as to what poetry should, and what it should not, imitate . It is curious to speculate as to what would have been the result had the poets followed the critics in this matter . Had not the instinct of the poet been too strong for the See also:schools, would poetry as an art have been lost and merged in such imaginative prose as Plato's ? Or is not the instinct for form too strong to be stifled ? By the poets themselves metre was always considered to be the one indispensable requisite of a poem, though, as regards criticism, even in the time of the See also:appearance of the Waverley Novels, the Quarterly See also:Review would sometimes speak of them as " poems "; and perhaps even later the same might be said of romances so concrete in method and diction, and so full of poetic energy, as Wuthering Heights and Jane See also:Eyre, where we get absolutely all that Aristotle requires for a poem . On the whole, however, the theory that versification is not an indispensable requisite of a poem seems to have become nearly obsolete . Perhaps, indeed, many critics would now go so far in the contrary direction as to say with See also:Hegel (Aesthetik, ii . 289) that " metre is the first and only See also:condition absolutely demanded by poetry, yea even more necessary than a figurative picturesque diction." At all events this at least may be said, that the division between poetical critics is not now between Aristotelians and Baconians; it is of a different kind altogether .

While one See also:

group of critics may still perhaps say with Dryden that " a poet is a maker, as the name signifies," and that " he who cannot make, See also:Farm and Matter . that is, invent, has his name for nothing," another group See also:con-tends that it is not the invention but the artistic treatment, the form, which determines whether an imaginative writer is a poet or a writer of prose—contends, in See also:short, that emotion is the basis of all true poetic expression, whatever be the subject-matter, that thoughts must be expressed in an emotional manner before they can be brought into poetry, and that this emotive expression demands even yet something else, viz. style and form . Although many critics are now agreed that " L'art est une forme," that without metre and without form there can be no The Impor- poetry, there are few who would contend that poetry tame of can exist by virtue of any one of these alone, or Ideas and even by virtue of all these combined . Quite inde-Attitude. pendent of verbal See also:melody, though mostly accompanying it, and quite See also:independent of " composition," there is an See also:atmosphere floating around the poet through which he sees everything, an atmosphere which stamps his utterances as poetry; for instance, among all the versifiers contemporary with See also:Donne there was none so rugged as he occasionally was, and yet such songs as " Sweetest love, I do not go for weariness of thee " prove how true a poet he was whenever he could See also:master those technicalities which far inferior poets find comparatively easy . While rhythm may to a very considerable degree be acquired (though, of course, the highest rhythmical effects never can), the power of looking at the world through the atmosphere that floats before the poet's eyes is not to be learned and not to be taught . This atmosphere is what we call poetic imagination . But first it seems necessary to say a word or two upon that high See also:temper of the soul which in truly great poetry gives See also:birth to this poetic imagination . The " See also:message " of poetry must be more unequivocal, more thoroughly accentuated, than that of any of the other fine arts . With regard to modern poetry, indeed, it may almost be said that if any writer's verse embodies a message, true, direct and pathetic, we cannot stay to inquire too curiously about the degree of artistic perfection with which it is delivered, for Wordsworth's saying " That which comes from the See also:heart goes to the heart " applies very closely indeed to modern poetry . The most truly passionate poet in See also:Greece was no doubt in a deep sense the most artistic poet; but in her case art and passion were one, and that is why she has been so cruelly misunderstood . The most truly passionate nature, and perhaps the greatest soul, that in See also:recent years has expressed itself in English verse is Elizabeth Barrett Browning; at least it is certain that, with the single exception of See also:Hood in the " See also:Song of the See also:Shirt," no writer of the 19th century really touched English See also:hearts with a hand so powerful as hers—and this notwithstanding violations of poetic form, or defective rhymes, such as would appal some of the contemporary versifiers of England and See also:France " who lisp in See also:numbers for the numbers [and nothing else] come." The truth is that in See also:order to produce poetry the soul must for the time being have reached that state of exaltation, that state of freedom from self-consciousness, depicted in the lines: " I started once, or seemed to start, in See also:pain, Resolved on See also:noble things, and strove to speak, As when a great thought strikes along the See also:brain, And flushes all the cheek." Whatsoever may be the poet's " knowledge of his art," into this See also:mood he must always pass before he can write a truly poetic line . For, notwithstanding all that may be said upon poetry as a fine art, it is in the deepest sense of the word an " inspiration." No man can write a line of genuine poetry without having been " See also:born again " (or, as the true rendering of the See also:text says, " born from above ") ; and then the mastery over those highest reaches of form which are beyond the ken of the mere versifier comes to him as a result of the See also:change .

Hence, with all Mrs Browning's metrical blemishes, the splendour of her metrical triumphs at her best . For what is the deep distinction between poet and proseman ? A writer may be many things besides a poet; he may be a See also:

warrior like Aeschylus, a man of business like Shakespeare, a courtierlike See also:Chaucer, or a See also:cosmopolitan philosopher like Goethe; but the moment the poetic mood is upon him all the trappings of the world with which for years he may perhaps have been clothing his soul—the world's knowingness, its cynicism, its self-seeking, its ambition—fall away, and the man becomes an inspired See also:child again, with ears attuned to nothing but the whispers of those See also:spirits from the See also:Golden Age, who, according to See also:Hesiod, haunt and bless the degenerate See also:earth . What such a man produces may greatly delight and astonish his readers, yet not so greatly as it delights and astonishes himself . His passages of pathos draw no tears so deep or so sweet as those that fall from his own eyes while he writes; his See also:sublime passages overawe no soul so imperiously as his own; his See also:humour draws no See also:laughter so rich or so deep as that stirred within his own See also:breast . It might almost be said, indeed, that Sincerity and See also:Conscience, the two angels that bring to the poet the wonders of the poetic See also:dream, bring him also the deepest, truest delight of form . It might almost be said that by aid of sincerity and conscience the poet is enabled to see more clearly than other men the eternal limits of his own art—to see with Sophocles that nothing, not even poetry itself, is of any See also:worth to man, invested as he is by the whole See also:army of evil, unless it is in the deepest and highest sense good, unless it comes linking us all together by closer bonds of sympathy and pity, strengthening us to fight the foes with whom See also:fate and even Nature, the See also:mother who See also:bore us, sometimes seem in See also:league—to see with Milton that the high quality of man's soul which in English is expressed by the word virtue is greater than even the great poem he prized, greater than all the rhythms of all the See also:tongues that have been spoken since See also:Babel—and to see with Shakespeare and with Shelley that the high passion which in English is called love is lovelier than all art, lovelier than all the See also:marble Mercuries that " await the See also:chisel of the sculptor " in all the marble hills . 2 . What Position does Poetry take up in Relation to the other Arts?—Notwithstanding the labours of See also:Lessing and his followers, the position accorded by criticism to poetry in poetry in relation to the other arts has never been so uncertain Relation to and anomalous as in recent years . On the one hand the other there are critics who, judging from their perpetual Art& comparison of poems to pictures, claim her as a sort of handmaid of painting and See also:sculpture . On the other hand the disciples of See also:Wagner, while professing to do See also:homage to poetry, have claimed her as the handmaid of music . With regard to the relations of poetry to painting and sculpture, it seems necessary to glance for a moment at the saying of See also:Simonides, as recorded by See also:Plutarch, that poetry is a speaking picture and that painting is a See also:mute poetry .

It appears to have had upon modern criticism as much See also:

influence since the publication of Lessing's See also:Laocoon as it had before . Perhaps it is in some measure answerable for the modern See also:vice of excessive word-painting . Beyond this one saying, there is little or nothing in Greek literature to show that the Greeks recognized between poetry and the plastic and pictorial arts an See also:affinity closer than that which exists between poetry and music and dancing . Understanding artistic methods more profoundly than the moderns, and far too profoundly to suppose that there is any See also:special and See also:peculiar affinity between an art whose See also:medium of expression is marble and an art whose medium of expression is a growth of oral symbols, the Greeks seem to have studied poetry not so much in its relation to painting and sculpture as in its relation to music and dancing . It is matter of See also:familiar knowledge, for instance, that at the Dionysian festival it was to the poet as " teacher of the See also:chorus" (xopocItSaaKaXos) that the prize was awarded, even though the " teacher of the chorus " were Aeschylus himself or Sophocles . And this recognition of the relation of poetry to music is' perhaps one of the many causes of the superiority of Greek to all other poetry in adapting artistic means to artistic ends . In Greek poetry, even in Homer's description of the See also:shield of See also:Achilles, even in the famous description by Sophocles of his native See also:woods in the Oedipus coloneus, such word-painting as occurs seems, if not inevitable and unconscious, so alive with imaginative feeling as to become part and See also:parcel of the domain of articulate speech, as we perceive in the wonderful See also:instrumentation of Wagner . Yet, while it can be shown that the place of poetry is scarcely so See also:close to sculpture and painting as to music on the one See also:side and loosened speech on the other, the affinity of poetry to music must not be exaggerated . We must be cautious how we follow the canons of Wagner and the more enthusiastic of his disciples, who almost seem to think that inarticulate See also:tone can not only suggest ideas but See also:express them—can give voice to the Verstand, in short, as well as to the Vernunft of man . Even the Greeks See also:drew a fundamental distinction between melic poetry (poetry written to be sung) and poetry that was written 'to be recited . It is a pity that, while modern critics of poetry have understood, or at least have given attention to painting and sculpture, so few have possessed any knowledge of music—a fact which makes Dante's treatise De vulgari eloquio so important . Dante was a musician, and seems to have had a considerable knowledge of the relations between musical and metrical laws .

But he did not, we think, assume that these laws are identical . If it is indeed possible to establish the identity of musical and metrical laws, it can only be done by a purely scientific investigation; it can only be done by a most searching inquiry into the subtle relations that we know must exist throughout the universe between all the laws of undulation . And it is curious to re-member that some of the greatest masters of verbal melody have had no knowledge of music, while some have not even shown any love of it . All Greek boys were taught music, but whether Pindar's unusual musical skill was born of natural instinct and inevitable passion, or came from the accidental circumstance that his See also:

father was, as has been alleged, a musician, and that he was as a boy elaborately taught musical science by See also:Lasus of Hermione, we have no means of knowing . Nor can we now learn how much of Milton's musical knowledge resulted from a like exceptional " environment," or from the fact that his father was a musician . But when we find, that Shelley seems to have been without the real passion for music, that See also:Rossetti disliked it, and that See also:Coleridge's See also:apprehension of musical effects was of the See also:ordinary nebulous kind, we must hesitate before accepting the theory of Wagner . The question cannot be pursued here; but if it should on inquiry be found that, although poetry is more closely related to music than to any of the other arts, yet the power over verbal melody at its very highest is so all-sufficing to its possessor, as in the case of Shelley and Coleridge, that absolute music becomes a superfluity, this would only be another See also:illustration of that intense See also:egoism and concentration of force—the impulse of all high artistic energy—which is required in order to achieve the rarest miracles of art . With regard to the relation of poetry to prose, Coleridge once asserted in conversation that the real See also:antithesis of poetry was not prose but science . If he was right the difference in kind lies, not between the poet and the prose writer, but between the literary artist (the man whose instinct is to manipulate language) and the man of facts and of action whose instinct impels him to See also:act, or, if not to act, to inquire . One thing is at least certain, that prose, however fervid and emotional it may become, must always be directed, or seem to be directed, by the reins of See also:logic . Or, to vary the See also:metaphor, like a See also:captive See also:balloon it can never really leave the earth . Indeed, with the literature of knowledge as opposed to the literature of power poetry has nothing to. do .

Facts have no place in poetry until they are brought into relation with the human soul . But a mere See also:

catalogue of See also:ships may become poetical if it tends to show the strength and See also:pride and See also:glory of the warriors who invested See also:Troy; a detailed description of the designs upon a shield, however beautiful and poetical in itself, becomes still more so if it tends to show the skill of the divine artificer and the invincible splendour of a See also:hero like Achilles . But mere dry exactitude of imitation is not for poetry but for loosened speech . Hence, most of the so-called poetry of Hesiod is not poetry at all . The See also:Muses who spoke to him about " truth " on Mt On the other hand, music can See also:trench very far upon t