THE STUDY OF POETRY

POETRY DEFINED

"If not asked, I know ; if you ask me I know not."

When challenged to answer the question What is poetry? most of us would like to evade it with the above quoted words of St. Augustine. We all have a certain instinctive sense of what constitutes poetry but it is difficult to translate this into exact language. Innumerable definitions have been offered from time to time by critics and by poet themselves.

According to Samuel Johnson "poetry is metrical composition; it is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of reason." Alexander Mill asks "what is poetry but the thought and words in which emotion spontaneously embodies itself?" Lord Macaulay says "by poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours." Poetry, declares Carlyle, "we will call Musical Thought." Poetry, declares Shelley, "in a general sense may be defined as the expression of imagination" ; it is, says Hazlitt, "the language of the imagination and the passions" ; says Leigh Hunt, "the utterance of a passion for truth, beauty, and power, embodying and illustrating its conceptions by imagination and fancy, and modulating its language on the principle of variety in unity." In Coleridge's view poetry is the antithesis of science, having for its immediate object pleasure, not truth ; in Wordsworth's phrase it "is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge," and "the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science." According to Matthew Arnold is "is simply the most delightful and perfect form of utterance that human words can reach", it is "nothing less than the most perfect speech of man, that in which he comes nearest to being able to utter the truth" ; it is "a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty." According to Edgar Allan Poe, "it is the rhythmic creation of beauty" ; according to Keble "a vent for overcharged feeling or a full imagination." According to Doyle "it expresses our dissatisfaction with what is present and close at hand." And Ruskin defines it as "the suggestion, by the imagination, of noble grounds for the noble emotions."

The list of definitions might be extended but the above examples will suffice to indicate the enormous difficulties which beset every attempt to imprison the protean life of poetry in the cast-iron terms of a logical formula. All the above definitions are doubtlessly suggestive yet when we look at them critically, and compare them, certain disturbing facts about them become clear. They are almost distracting in their variety because the subject is approached from many different point of view. Some fail to define because they express rather what is poetical in general. Some are too narrow and exclusive because they recognise only the particular kind of poetry in which the writer happened to be personally interested.

THE STUDY OF POETRY

Therefore it is fortunate for us that as students of poetry we need not concern ourselves greatly to begin with about formulas and definitions and the controversies about the ideal aims of poetry which these will often be found to involve. At the same time some preliminary inquiry into the commoner qualities of poetry is manifestly necessary. Our initial task must be not to seek a formula of definition but to mark out some of the characteristics of poetry which when we take it as we find it, seem on the whole to be fairly general and constant.

We know that literature is the interpretation of life as life shapes itself in the mind of the interpreter. Then what is the essential element in that interpretation which we describe as poetical? We have only to think carefully about the connotations of the word poetical and an answer will at once suggest itself. By poetical we understand the emotional and the imaginative. By the poetical interpretation of life we mean a treatment of its facts, experiences, problems, in which the emotional and the imaginative elements predominate. It is one chief characteristic of poetry, then, that whatever it touches in life, it relates to our feelings and passions, while at the same time by the exercise of imaginative power it both transfigures existing realities and "gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."

When we speak of imagination and feeling as predominating in poetry we mean to distinguish these as general and constant characteristics of the poetic treatment of life . But they are not the only essential qualities because they may exist in poetic prose. There is much poetry which is purely 'prosaic' and there is much prose which is markedly 'poetical' but a dividing line between prose and poetry still exists. Poetry is a particular kind of art ; that it arises only when the poetic qualities of imagination and feeling are embodied in a certain form of expression. That form is regularly rhythmical language or metre. Without this we may have the spirit of poetry without its externals. With this we may have the externals of poetry without its spirit. In its fullest and completest sense, poetry presupposes the union of the two.

Many critics have categorically denied that poetry has anything to do with form. Thus Sir Philip Sidney acknowledges that "the greatest part of poets have apparelled their poetical inventions in that numbrous kinde of writing which is called verse," but he also maintains that verse is 'apparell' only, "being but an ornament and no cause to poetry." Bacon also stated that the 'feigning' which was for him the peculiar function of poetry, may be "as well in prose as in verse." Coleridge too declares that "poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre."

But from the other side the reply has come that, whatever else poetry may or may not evolve, the employment of a systematically rhythmical language is one of its necessary conditions. The reason why verse is necessary to the form of poetry is that the perfection of the poetical spirit demands it ... that the circle of enthusiasm, beauty, and power is incomplete without it. The difference in question is not necessarily between a 'poetical' and a 'prosaic' subject but between the forms in which perhaps the same subject may be handled. Treated in prose, it may be made richly poetical ; but only when treated in metre is it fashioned into actual poetry.

If poetry, then, as regards to its substance and spirit, is the antithesis of science, or matter of fact, as Wordsworth and Coleridge rightly insisted, it is none the less to be distinguished from prose, as regards its form, by the systematically rhythmical character of its language. Carlyle thought of the poet as seer and distinctly says "for my own part, I find considerable meaning in the old vulgar distinction of poetry being metrical, having music in it." Matthew Arnold, despite his pre-occupation with the idea of poetry as "criticism of life," lays stress upon "the essential difference between imaginative production in verse, and imaginative production in prose." The "rhythm and measure" of poetry "elevated to a regularity, certainty, and force very different from that of the rhythm and measure which can pervade prose, are a part of its perfection."

Even if the relation between rhythmical form and and poetical substance and feeling were only an accidental one, the ordered measure of verse would still hold its ground as an important accessory of poetry because it adds greatly to the aesthetic pleasure which is the chief function of poetry. A few theorists may argue in favour of the 'liberation' of poetry from the formal restraints of metre but a vast majority of those who love poetry will acknowledge that the definitely regulated music of its language is one peculiar element in the satisfaction yielded by it.

Metre is a part of the perfection of poetry and it is not a mere accessory. Alexander Mill says "all deep and sustained feeling has tended to express itself in rhythmical language, and the deeper the feeling the more characteristic and decided the rhythm." It is this psychological truth which lies at the root of the almost universal condition--- which is therefore a causal, and not simply an accidental connection, between poetic feeling and metrical diction.

It was noted by Hegel that the use of verse in a given piece of literature serves in itself to lift us into a world quite different from that of prose or everyday life. Schiller writes "how closely in poetry substance and form are connected. Since I have begun to transform my prosaic language into a poetical rhythmical one, I find myself under a totally different jurisdiction ; even many motives which in the prosaic execution seemed to me to be perfectly in place , I can no longer use ; they were merely good for the common domestic understanding, whose organ prose seems to be ; but verse absolutely demands reference to the imagination : and thus I was obliged to become poetical in many of my motives."

Commonly we think of poetic feeling as fashioning metrical form for its expression. Schiller helps us to realise the intimacy of the connection between them by emphasising the influence of poetic form in stimulating the poetic spirit. While verse is of course often used as the vehicle of purely prosaic thought , it ought not to be so used ; and that conversely, while an exalted mood of passion and imaginative ecstasy may often find utterance in prose, prose is not its most appropriate or even its most natural medium. The offices of prose and verse are distinct ; and their distinction is not fortuitous nor arbitrary, but vital. Thus it is that in all true poetry that union of substance and form is so organic and complete that impresses us with a conviction of its absolute inevitability.

Metre, like music, makes in itself a profound appeal to the feelings. Merely to arrange words in a definitely rhythmical order is to endow them with a new and subtle emotional power -- -- to touch them with a peculiar suggestiveness which in themselves, simply as words conveying such and such meanings, they do not possess. Why this is, the student of literature must leave it to the psychologist to explain. For him it is a fact, and a fact of utmost interest and significance. He knows that the recurrent beats and pauses, the rapid march or the languid movement, of verse read to him in a language he does not understand, will often stir him, as he is stirred by sonata or symphony to moods of martial excitement or pensive melancholy; and from this he learns that metre is a powerful aid in the emotionalisation of thought, and that the various metrical forms in which the poet most naturally and appropriately embodies his feeling, are also, of all possible forms , the most potent to excite the reader's feelings to a sympathetic response.

"How much the power of poetry depends upon the nice inflections of rhythm alone, may be proved, " as James Montgomery pointed out, "by taking the finest passages of Milton and Shakespeare , and merely putting them into prose, with the least possible variations of the words themselves. The attempt would be like gathering up dew drops, which appear jewels and pearls on the grass, but run into water in the hand ; the essence and the elements remain, but the grace, the sparkle, and the form are gone."

Poetry is an interpretation of life through the imagination and the feelings. We can best approach this subject by noting the fundamental difference between poetry and science.

The world with which science deals is what we commonly call the world of fact ; by which we properly mean the world of physical actuality objectively considered. The business of the scientist is with things as they are in themselves. He studies their forms and organisations, their qualities, characteristics, and connections ; he collates and classifies them ; he investigates the conditions and processes under and by which they have come to be what they are. Each science treats of some one aspect of the external world in this purely objective way ; while science in the larger sense advances from fact to generalisation, and from generalisation to still more and more comprehensive generalisations, thus seeking to reduce the multiplicity and apparent confusion of the universe to unity and order. Science, therefore, aims to afford a systematic and rational explanation of things--- an explanation which shall include their natures, genesis, and history-- in terms of cause, effect, and physical law.


In our daily converse with the world we are indeed chiefly interested, not in things as they are in themselves, but with the aspect which they bear and the appeal which they make to our emotional natures. While we are actually engaged in scientific study we may think of the universe as a vast aggregation of phenomena to be examined, catalogued, accounted for ; but in our common human dealings with it we do not so think of it. When science has provided us with its completest rationale of things, we are still primarily impressed by their mystery and beauty. No explanation can ever destroy this impression ; rather, we may say that every explanation will serve only to intensify it. In this simple fact we have to seek both the foundation and the permanent significance of poetry. Though the mystery and beauty of the world are habitually recognised by us, they are recognised for the most part only in a vague and sluggish way. There are, however, moods of heightened feeling in which they come home to us with special vividness and power. It is then that we are deeply stirred to delight or wonder, to gratitude or reverent awe. Out of such moods poetry springs ; to such moods it addresses it self. It reports to us of things from their emotional and spiritual sides. It expresses and interprets their appeal to us, and our response to them. It is thus at once the antithesis and the complement of science.

"Poetry," says Leigh Hunt, "begins where matter of fact or of science ceases to be merely such, and to exhibit a further truth, the connection it has with the world of emotion, and its power to produce imaginative pleasure. Inquiring of a gardener, for instance, what flower it is we see yonder, he answers 'a lily.' This is matter of fact. The botanist pronounces it to be of the order of Hexandria monogynia. This is matter of science. It is the 'lady' of the garden says Spenser ; and here we begin to have a poetical sense of its fairness and grace. It is 'the plant and flower of light,' says Ben Jonson ; and poetry then shows us the beauty of the flower in all its mystery and splendour.


Matthew Arnold is perfectly right in maintaining that "the grand power of poetry is the power of so dealing with things as to awaken in us a wonderfully full, new, and intimate sense of them, and of our relations with them." Arnold further says "I will not now inquire whether this sense is illusive, whether it can be proved not to be illusive, whether it does absolutely make us possess the real nature of things ; all I say is, that poetry can awaken it in us, and to awaken it is one of the highest powers of poetry. The interpretations of science do not give us this intimate sense of objects as the interpretations of poetry give it ; they appeal to a limited faculty, and not to the whole man. It was not Linnaeus or Cavendish or Cuvier who gives us the the true sense of animals, or water, or plants, who seizes their secret, who makes us participate in their life ; it is Shakespeare with his
'
daffodils
That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty' ;

it is Wordsworth, with his
'
voice ... heard
In spring-time from the cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides' ;

it is Keats, with his

'moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round Earth's human shores' ; "

Let us look at the difference between the scientist's treatment and the poet's treatment of a storm on the Atlantic coast. The poet says :

When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the Equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks.

Or take this stanza by a balladist :

The East Wind gathered, all unknown,
A thick sea-cloud his course before :
He left by night the frozen zone,
And smote the cliffs of Labrador ;
He lashed the coasts on either hand,
And betwixt the Cape and Newfoundland
Into the bay his armies pour.

All this impersonification and fancy is translated by the Weather Bureau like the following :

"An area of extreme low pressure is rapidly moving up the Atlantic coast, with wind and rain. Storm centre now off Charleston, S.C. Wind N.E. Velocity, 54. Barometer, 29.6. The disturbance will reach New York on Wednesday, and proceed eastward to the Banks and Bay of St. Lawrence. Danger-signals ordered for All North Atlantic ports."

The imaginative rendering of fact is in its own way just as important as the plain statement of it. But we may go even farther than this and assert that from one point of view the imaginative rendering contains a quality of vital truth which is not to be found in plain statement. For which gives us the more genuine and vivid sense of a storm as we ourselves actually feel it--- the impersonification and fancy of the poet, or the colourless and unimpassioned language of the Weather Bureau bulletin?

We are thus able to realise the essential quality of poetic truth. By poetic truth we do not mean fidelity to facts in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Such fidelity we look for in science. By poetic truth we mean fidelity to our emotional apprehension of facts, to the impression which they make upon us, to the feelings of pleasure or pain, hope or fear, wonder or religious reverence, which they arouse. Therefore our first test of truth in poetry is its accuracy in expressing, not what things are in themselves, but their beauty and mystery, their interest and meaning for us.

Here, then, we reach the full significance of poetry as an interpretation of life-- the life of nature and the life of humanity--- through the imagination and the feelings. It is not to be assumed that because a poet's principal concern is with the beauty and mystery, the human interest and meaning of the things which he deals, he is under no restraint or obligation in respect of objective reality. The poet gives us that intimate sense of things and of our relations with them, of which Arnold speaks, by touching them with imagination and feeling, and linking them with our own life. But we none the less demand of him that his vision of the world shall still be a clear and steady vision, and that absolute fidelity shall be his guiding principle in all his renderings of perceived facts. All poetry has to be tried by the criterion of this fidelity, for it belongs to the essential foundation of poetic greatness.

While the poet will always and of necessity deal largely with such aspects of things as appeal directly to the senses and the feelings, there is nothing to prevent him from penetrating beneath their surface, or from taking as his subject matter those more recondite truths of nature which are revealed by science. There is thus a poetic interpretation of nature based upon scientific knowledge and the emotions stirred by this, as there is a poetic interpretation which limits itself to appearances and the emotions stirred by them. When the hero of Tennyson's Maud soliloquises over the tiny shell which he picks up on the Breton coast :

See what a lovely shell
Small and pure as a pearl,
Lying close on my foot,
Frail, but a work divine,
Made so fairly well
With delicate spire and whorl,
How exquisitely minute,
A miracle of design ;

he gives us for the moment nothing beyond careful observation and appropriate feeling. But when his imagination begins to play about it and its history, and he continues :

The tiny shell is forlorn,
Void of the little living will
That made it stir on the shore.
Did he stand at the diamond door
Of his house in a rainbow frill ?
Did he push, when he was uncurl'd,
A golden foot or a fairy horn
Thro' his dim water-world ?

we see that he is drawing in part upon knowledge furnished by science to complete that given by observation.

Thus Wordsworth has the best of grounds for declaring that "the objects of the poet's thoughts are everywhere," and that "though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favourite guides, yet he will follow wherever he can find an atmosphere of
sensation in which to move his wings."

In an era of rapidly accumulating scientific discoveries and vast and far reaching intellectual change we must expect to encounter a certain amount of antagonism between science and poetry, in the same way and for the same reason as we must expect to encounter a certain amount of antagonism between science and religion. In the development of thought the feelings can never quite keep pace with the intellect ; and, as a result of this, the poet is, in the average of cases, conservative ; he clings by preference to what is old and familiar ; he is commonly repelled by what is new and strange. Hence, the spiritual unrest, the uncertainties, the struggles and doubts and pessimism. The emotionalisation of knowledge is inevitably a slow and gradual process ; but meanwhile, one measure of a poet's greatness as a thinker is his ability to perceive the possibility of it, and by his insight into the spiritual meanings of scientific fact, to point forward and help in its accomplishments.

Macaulay once spoke of the truth that "is essential to poetry" as the "truth of madness," and went on to declare that in poetry, though "the reasonings are just," the "premises are false," and that their acceptance "requires a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial derangement of the intellect." It is a glringly absurd conception of poetry. Poetic truth is emphatically not the truth of madness. On the contrary it has the essential quality of sanity. It is the truth of things as seen from a point of view different from that of science ; and it is this fact which misled Macaulay into his strange vagaries concerning it. But as we can never learn the whole truth of things until this other point of view has been taken--- as to know things in their entirety means to know them in their poetic as well as in their scientific aspects and meaning--- the truth of poetry while antithetical to that of science, is at the same time, as has been shown, complementary to it. Thus as Leigh Hunt says, to the poet "truth of every kind belongs.... provided it can bud into any kind of beauty, or is capable of being illustrated and impressed by the poetic faculty."

One chief element of poetry is its revealing power. It opens our eyes to sensuous beauties and spiritual meanings in the worlds of human experience and of nature to which otherwise we should remain blind. There are few of us who have not some endowment of poetic insight and feeling, some measure of "the vision and the faculty divine." But in the large majority of cases such poetic capacity as we possess is cramped by the ordinary conditions of existence, crippled by the mere material interests which fills so vast a place in our daily routine, and sometimes even consciously or unconsciously repressed. The true poet, whatever his range and quality, is one in whom the power of seeing and feeling th sensuous beauty and spiritual meaning of things exists in a pre-eminent degree, and to whom, moreover, another special power has been granted --- the power of so expressing and interpreting what he sees and feels as to quicken our imagination and sympathies, and to make us see and feel with him. Thus one great service that the poet renders to us is that of "awakening the mind's attention to the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and wonders of the world before us ; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand."

While it helps us directly by revealing fresh beauty and unsuspected significance in the actual things with which it deals, it does at the same time something more than this. It educates us to look at life for ourselves with more of a poet's insight and power of comprehension ; it strengthens our own vision and sympathies ; and thus it develops within us the latent faculty of poetic interpretation.

Poetry, therefore, covers our relations with life at almost every point, appeals to nearly all our moods and finds its subject matter in whatever will yield poetic beauty and meaning. Thus every kind of poetry has its efficacy and justification. Yet, if poetry is an interpretation of life through imagination and feeling, its essential greatness must ultimately be judged by the greatness of the power with which it handles life's greatest and most abiding things --- the things which belong to our highest experiences and interests.

Since poetry is an art, it must be estimated also with respect to its purely artistic or technical features. But this consideration must not blind us to the fact that poetic art is after all an embodiment of spirit and a vehicle of thought and feeling, and that is from the character of the spirit, thought, and feeling which it expresses that it derives its substantial value. This does not involve any denial of the proposition that the immediate object of poetry, as of any other art form, is to give pleasure. It simply means that the quality of the pleasure itself must depend upon the nature of the subject matter and the manner in which it is presented.

From time to time we hear more than enough of 'art for art's sake.' But this vague and shadowy doctrine is, so far as the art of poetry is concerned, brought into contempt by the rank and standing of those who inculcate it ; for it is for the most part associated with minor poets and dilettante critics. The really great poets of the world have never taken any account of it. One and all, they have been substantial men. They have always recognised that poetry is made out of life, belongs to life, exists for life.

We can thus go every step with Matthew Arnold when he writes "it is important, therefore, to hold fast to this : that poetry is at bottom a criticism of life ; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas life -- to the question : How to live. Morals are often treated in a narrow and false fashion ; they are bound up with systems of thought and belief which have had their day ; they are fallen into the hands of pedants and professional dealers ; they grow tiresome to some of us. We find attraction, at times, even in a poetry of revolt against them ; in a poetry which might take for its motto Omar Khayyam's words : 'Let us make up in the tavern for the time we have wasted in the mosque.' Or we find attractions in a poetry indifferent to them ; in a poetry where the contents may be what they will, but where the form is studied and exquisite. We delude ourselves in either case ; and the best cure for our delusion is to let our minds rest upon the great and inexhaustible word life, until we learn to enter into its meaning. A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life ; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life."

"No man was ever yet a great poet," says Coleridge, "without being at the same time a profound philosopher." "The great poets," says Emerson, "are judged by the frame of mind they induce." "We may ",says Landor, "write little things well, and accumulate one upon another, but never will any be justly called a great poet unless he has treated a great subject worthily. He may be the poet of the lover and the idler, he may be the poet of green fields or gay society ; but whoever is this can be no more. A throne is not built of bird's nests, nor do a thousand reeds make a trumpet."

We are not to confuse the functions of the poet with those of the preacher or homilist ; their business is to instruct and guide, his to stir vivify, to inspire, energise and delight. When Browning says---"philosophy first, and poetry, which is its highest outcome, afterwards" ; and when Lowell says, "no poem ever makes me respect its author which does not in some way convey the truth of philosophy," we feel that in these utterances the scope and powers of poetry are unduly circumscribed. But there is no reason why poetry should not be the outcome of philosophy and the vehicle of philosophic truth without sacrificing anything of its essential poetic qualities and graces. The real objection to so much that passes as didactic poetry is not that it is didactic, but that is not poetry. Nevertheless, there is no inevitable antagonism between the didactic and the poetical. It all depends upon the poet. Take, for example, the works of Wordsworth, who wished to be 'considered as a teacher or as nothing.'

Therefore we do not quarrel with any poet who offers us philosophy in the fashion of poetry. We require only that his philosophy shall be transfigured by imagination and feeling ; that it shall be shaped into a thing of beauty ; that it shall be wrought into true poetic expression ; and thus in reading him we shall be aware of the difference between his rendering of the philosophic truth and any mere prose statement of it.

A poet's greatness must ultimately depend upon the greatness of his subject matter, the power of thought, which he brings to bear upon it, and his moral strength and influence. And as Walter Pater says " It is on the quality of the matter it informs or controls, its compass, its variety, its alliance to great ends, or the depth of the note of revolt, or the largeness of hope in it, that the greatness of literary art depends, as The Divine Comedy, Paradise Lost, Les Miserables, The English Bible are great art.

In the study of poetry, therefore, as in the study of all other kinds of literature, our attention must be directed to the poet himself ; to his personality and outlook upon the world ; to the interpretation of life expressly given by or held in solution in his work ; to the individual note in it.

In a broad way, poetry may be divided into two classes. There is the poetry in which the poet goes down into himself and finds his inspiration and his subjects in his own experiences, thoughts, and feelings. There is the poetry in which the poet goes out of himself, mingles with the action and passion of the world without, and deals with what he discovers there with little reference to his own individuality. The former class we may call personal or subjective poetry, or the poetry of self-delineation and self-expression. The latter we may call impersonal or objective poetry, or the poetry of representation or creation. The boundary line between these two different divisions cannot be drawn with absolute precision and in much poetry, especially in the very composite modern poetry, personal and impersonal elements continually combine.

With personal or subjective poetry the name lyrical is often also applied. Lyric poetry was poetry composed to be sung to the accompaniment of lyre or harp. In this sense much poetry belonging to the impersonal division might be described as lyrical. But the use of 'lyrical' will be restricted to the simpler forms of the poetry in which the poet is principally preoccupied with himself.

In such simpler forms this personal poetry is almost unlimited in range and variety, for it may touch nearly all aspects of experience, from those which are most narrowly individual to those which involve the broadest interest of our common humanity. Thus we have the convivial or bacchanalian lyric ; the lyric which skims the lighter things of life ; the lyric of love in all its phases, and with all its attendant hopes and longings, joys and sorrows ; the lyric of patriotism ; the lyric of religious emotion ; and countless other kinds.

The pure lyric, having for its purpose the expression of some single mood or feeling, commonly gains much in emotional power by brevity and condensation, and that over elaboration is almost certain to entail loss in effectiveness.

Though the essence of lyrical poetry is personality, it must yet be remembered that the majority of the world's great lyrics owe their place in literature very largely to the fact that they embody what is typically human rather than what is merely individual and particular, and that thus every reader finds in them the expression of experiences and feelings in which he himself is fully able to share. In such cases we do not have to put ourselves in the poet's place because he has already put himself into ours. Moreover, there is much lyrical poetry which is communal rather than personal in character. Investigations into the beginnings of literature have shown that poetry originated in the desire to give outward form to the feelings not of the individual but of the clan or group.

The immense development of individuality in the modern world has naturally been followed by an increase of the personal and a subsidence of the communal factor in poetry. Yet group consciousness still produces group poetry ; as in hymns and lyrics of patriotism. Of such group poetry the chorus is also an interesting survival. A further fact of importance is that in periods when general feelings are deeply stirred, and men are lifted out of themselves and the concerns of their private lots, the communal element in poetry becomes specially conspicuous. Thus Byron, though one of the greatest egoist of English literature, and a complete exponent of that extreme individualism which is one characteristic of the romantic movement, often poured into his verse the world-passion which shook all Europe in the revolutionary age.

Personal poetry passes by insensible degrees from the simpler forms of 'lyric' into meditative and philosophic poetry in which the element of thought becomes important.

It should be observed that there is a good deal of poetry which is didactic in intention but narrative in form --- poetry in which the truths to be conveyed are wrought into story, parable, allegory. This poetry is commonly classed as narrative ant therefore falls into the objective division.

Ode is a rimed lyric often in the form of an address ; generally dignified or exalted in subject, feeling and style ; or as any strain of enthusiastic or exalted lyric verse, directed to a fix purpose , and dealing progressively with a dignified theme. The ode is not specifically differentiated by any one constant feature, or combination of features, from other kinds of lyric ; the term is, in fact, an elastic and most ambiguous one.In addition to dignity or exaltation of matter and manner and a logical evolution of thought it is generally marked by a certain amount of complexity and elaboration ; it has often something of the quality of a poetical oration ; while often, again, it is inspired by some great public occasion. In structure, it may be regular, like Spenser's Epithalamion, Collins's Ode to Evening, Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, and Keats' odes To a Nightingale and On a Greecian Urn ; or irregular like Dryden's Alexander's Feast, Collins's The Passions, Wordsworth's Intimations on Immortality and Tennyson's Ode on the Death of Duke of Wellington. In some cases a classic form is taken as model ; as we have Horatian odes or Pindaric odes.

One of the most important divisions of personal poetry is the Elegy. In its simplest form, as in David's Lament for Saul and Jonathan, Landor's Rose Aylmer and Tennyson's Break, Break, Break, this is a brief lyric of mourning or direct utterance of personal bereavement and sorrow. However, in the evolution of literature the elegy has undergone a great elaboration and has expanded in many directions. It has sometimes become the medium of communal feeling. It has grown into a memorial or encomiastic poem, containing the poet's tribute to some great man (not necessarily relative or friend) and often a study of his life and character, with reminiscences and thoughts suggested by them ; as in Spenser's Astrophel, Ben Jonson's To the Memory of my Beloved ... Mr. William Shakespeare, Milton's Lycidas, Arnold's Rugby Chapel and Thyrsis.

Often, too, the philosophic and speculative elements become predominant in it, sometimes even to the total subordination of the purely personal interest ; the poet, brooding upon his subject, being moved to meditations over questions immediately raised by it, or over the deepest problems of life and destiny. In many cases, of course, all these characteristics are combined.

One particular type of elegy calls for separate mention -- the pastoral elegy, in which the poet expresses his sorrow under the similitude of a shepherd mourning for a companion, or otherwise through conventional bucolic machinery.

So far we have considered the elegy in its various developments as a memorial poem only. It remains to add that the word has long been more broadly used for any poem distinctively reflective in character, and of a markedly melancholy strain. One of the most famous English poems -- Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard -- shows this extension of meaning.

Under the general head of subjective poetry we may also include the descriptive poem, the Epistle, and the Satire. Finally, it may be mentioned that there are certain kinds of lyrical poetry which are classified wholly on the basis of form. The only one of these which has any real importance for readers is the Sonnet, a poem of fourteen lines, governed by certain prescribed rules in general structure and in the disposition of rimes. These rules have indeed been often ignored by English sonnet writers from Shakespeare downward, and thus a distinction has grown up between the regular (Italian) and the irregular (Shakespearean).

From subjective or personal poetry we move on to objective or impersonal poetry. The fundamental characteristics of this poetry is that deals directly, not with the thoughts and feelings of the poet, but with the outer world of passion and action.Therefore, while in subjective poetry, which is the poetry of introspection, the poet looks into his heart to write, and even draws the outer world down into himself and steeps it in its own emotions, in objective poetry he projects himself into the life without, and, seeking there his motives and subjects, handles these with the least possible admixture of his own individuality.

Such impersonal poetry falls naturally into two groups---the narrative and the dramatic. In our study of narrative poetry we naturally begin with the ballad, or short story in verse ; a form which appears to have arisen spontaneously in almost all literatures, and represents one of the earliest stages in the evolution of poetic art. Their themes are commonly furnished by the more elementary aspects of life ; large space is given in them to tales of adventure, fighting, deeds of prowess and valour ; they have frequently a strong infusion of supernaturalism ; while love, hatred, pity and the simpler interests of the domestic lot, receive a full share of attention. In method and style they are characterised by straightforwardness and rapidity of narration. Many of these ballads have immense dramatic power and wonderful metrical beauty. The modern ballad may be defined as a literary development of the traditional form.

From the ballad we pass to the longer narrative in verse. Of this large species a number of fairly well marked varieties may be distinguished, and the first place must be given to the Epic. This again has to be divided into the epic of growth and the epic of art. In contrast to the epic of art, the epic of growth is not in its entirety the work of a single author but , to some extent, the result of a process of evolution and consolidation. An epic of this kind may be regarded as the final product of a long series of accretions and syntheses ; scattered ballads gradually clustering together about a common character into ballad cycles (e.g. the English Robin Hood cycle), and these at length being reduced to approximate unity by the intervention of conscious art. Well known examples are Beowulf (Anglo Saxon), Nibelungenlied (Germanic) and Kalevala (Finnish). To the same class belong the two great epics of the world, the Iliad and the Odyssey and also the two great Indian epics the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.

All primitive epics deal with the same kind of subject matter. Their themes are furnished by the deeds of the heroes, generally the great legendary heroes of the race ; and a vast bodies of immemorial traditions provide the basis of their structure.

The relation of the epic of art to the epic of growth is much the same as that of the modern ballad to its traditional form. It is the product of individual genius working in an age of scholarship and literary culture on the lines already laid down. One great epic of art occupies a place of capital importance in literary history not only on account of its splendid qualities but also because it became a chief model for other epics--- the Aeneid. And in Paradise Lost English poetry possesses one of the supreme master pieces of epic literature.

The literary epic naturally resembles the primitive epic in various fundamental characteristics. Its subject matter is of the old heroic and mythical kind ; it makes free use of the supernatural ; it follows the same structural plan and reproduces many traditional details of composition ; while, greatly as it necessarily differs in style, it often adopts the formulas, fixed epithets, and stereo typed phrases and locution, which are among the marked features of the early type. But beneath all superficial likenesses there is a radical dissimilarity. The heroic and legendary material is no longer living material ; it is invented by the poet or disinterred by scholarly research ; and it is handled with laborious care in accordance with abstract rules and principles which have become part of an accepted literary tradition. Where, therefore, the epic of growth is fresh spontaneous, racy, the epic of art is learned, antiquarian, bookish and imitative.

A minor form of the epic of art must be mentioned here -- the Mock Epic, in which the machinery and conventions of the regular epic are employed in connection with trivial themes, and thus turned to the purpose of parody, satire and burlesque. The finest example of it in English poetry is Pope's The Rape of the Lock and Dryden's Mc Flecknoe.

Another type of narrative poetry is the Metrical Romance. As, however, in the evolution of literature this term has undergone considerable enlargement of meaning, various different classes of composition have to be included under it. First, there are those poems which fall under the strictest definition of romance, which originally signified a story told in one of the romance languages, and dealing with chivalry, knight errantry, fighting, adventure, enchantments, love. Then there are the English narratives of the same general type which, as the word had already come to denote a certain kind of matter and treatment, were called romances though not written in a romance tongue. Chaucer's splendid idealised picture of the fast vanishing world of chivalry, The Knight's Tale , deserves special mention here. Thence we pass to such poems as Ariosto's Orlando Furioso and Spenser's Faery Queene, in which the familiar characters and machinery of the old romances ---- wandering knights, distressed damsels, battles, tournaments, giants, dwarfs, wizards, enchanted castles --- are re-manipulated for different purposes by poets for whom such things have become as much matters of literary tradition as are heroic and mythical subjects for writers of epic of art.

The last division of objective poetry is the Dramatic. This does not mean the regular acted dramas but poetry which is essentially dramatic in principle. Poetry in which the poet merges himself in his character of characters, and does not, as in subjective poetry or ordinary narrative, describe or relate in his own person and from the outside. In all varieties of narrative poetry the dramatic element commonly appears more or less prominently in the shape dialogue. The use of the epithet 'dramatic' should rather be confined to poems in which the poet's assumption of character has a real importance in the working out of his theme.


So understood, dramatic poetry may be subdivided into several groups. There is first the Dramatic Lyric. This is in spirit and method a subjective poem ; but the subjective element pertains, not to the poet himself, but to some other some, into whose moods and experiences he enters , and to whose thoughts and feelings he gives vicarious expression. Browning's works furnish many familiar examples of this type.

Secondly, there is the Dramatic Story, including the ballad, like Tennyson's The First Quarrel and The Revenge, Browning's How they brought the Good News from Ghent and Muleykeh and Arnold's Forsaken Merman ; and the more extended narrative like Browning's A Forgiveness, Rossetti's A Last Confession and Tennyson's monodrama Maud. Sometimes the story is told entirely in dialogue, as in Rossetti's Sister Helen.

A third species of dramatic poetry comprises the Dramatic Monologue. It differs from the dramatic lyric as the more elaborate forms of personal poetry differs from the simple lyric proper ; while, however closely it may approximate to the narrative by its free use of incident, the fact that it treats all outward things as subordinate to those inner forces and problems upon which its interest is concentrated, is sufficient to put it into a class by itself. It is essentially a study of character, of mental states, of moral crises, made from the inside. Thus it is predominantly psychological, analytical, meditative, argumentative. Of this form Browning is the greatest master and in his work may be found examples of almost every variety of it, from brief and subtle self-delineation, as in My Last Duchess, to long and profound exploration of spiritual depths and moral complexities as in The Bishop orders his Tomb.

Let us close the discussion of types of poetry here itself. The readers must remember that it is not intended to be either rigorously logical or exhaustively complete.

So far our attention was directed to the content of poetry and to its general importance as an interpretation of life. We must now devote some time to its formal and technical aspect. From what has already been said about the vital connection between poetic feeling and rhythmical expression it is evident that careful consideration must be given to metre.

By metre we understand that ordered rhythm which results from a regulated alternation of syllables of different characters or values. In the Greek and Latin languages this difference in character or value depended upon what is called quantity, or the length of time taken in pronunciation ; and the metrical 'foot' , or group of syllables forming the basis of the line or verse, was composed of short and long syllables arranged according to certain schemes.

Thus the Iambic foot was made up of a short syllable followed by a long one ; the Dactyllic, of a long syllable followed by two short ones ; the Spondaic, of two long syllables and so on. In English, the basis of metre is not quantity but accent, and ordered rhythm arises from a regulated alternation of syllables which are stressed, or heavy, and unstressed or light. Now a stressed syllable may be combined in a foot with one unstressed or with two (never, in English verse, with more than two) ; and thus we may have feet of two syllables or of three, the character in each case may be determined by the relative position of the accent.

The five chief measures of English verse --- two disyllabic and three trisyllabic --- are as follows :
1. Feet of two syllables
a) The Iambic, in which the unaccented syllable precedes the accented
b) The Trochaic, in which the unaccented syllable follows the accented
2. Feet of three syllables
a)The Anapaestic, in which two unaccented syllables precede the accented
b) The Dactyllic, in which two unaccented syllables follow the accented
c) The Amphibrachic, in which accented syllable comes between two unaccented.

These feet form the foundation of lines or verse, which may be called iambic, trochaic, anapaestic, dactyllic, and amphibrachic. Such lines or verses may then further be described as dimeter, trimeter, tetrameter, pentameter, heptameter, and octameter, according to the number of feet of which they are composed.

These theoretical systems are in actual practise subject to continual variation, and that much of English poetry , and specially of modern English poetry, is characterised by great metrical irregularity.

On the principle that the connection between matter and form in poetry is an organic one, the question of the propriety and aesthetic value of the verse employed in a given case is, therefore, of the utmost interest. Similarly, in the study of any poet it will always be worth while to consider the measures most frequently and most successfully used by him, and their relation to the characteristic qualities of his temper and genius.

While metre is an essential concomitant of poetry, rime is to be regarded as only an accessory ; yet it is so common an accessory in English verse, and in most of its forms, indeed, so nearly constant a feature, that its importance can hardly be overstated. It adds much to the beauty of poetry as 'musical speech,' and therefore to the pleasure which poetry affords. It has also frequently been pointed out that, by marking distinctly the close of lines and stanzas, it helps to emphasise rhythm.

Rime is the correspondence in sound between syllable and syllable. Rimes may be single (masculine) as ring, sing ; or double (feminine) as ringing,singing ; or triple as unfortunate, importunate. A poem may be entirely in single rimes, or in double, or in triple ; or different kinds may be introduced in regular alternation.

A stanza is a group of lines forming within itself a unit of organisation. In many cases the stanzas composing a poem are quite irregular alike in length and structure, as in Wordsworth's Ode on the Intimations of Immortality and Tennyson's Maud. But as a rule a poem is built up of sections strictly identical in form. Regular stanzas are commonly defined by the number of their lines and the disposition of the rimes which bind these lines together. The stanza forms of English poetry are so numerous and varied that no complete tabulation of them could be attempted here ; but the following may be mentioned as some of the best known examples :-- the couplet (riming aa), as in Pope's Essay on Man and Keats's Endymion ; the triplet (aaa), as in Tennyson's Two Voices ; the quatrain in various forms, as, that of Keats's La Belle Dame Sans Merci (abcb), that of Gray's Elegy (abab), that of Tennyson's In Memoriam (abba), that of FitzGerald's version of the Rubaiyat (aaba) ; the six line stanza in various forms, as , that of Byron's She Walks in Beauty (ababab), that of Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra (aabaab), that of Southey's The Scholar (ababcc), and a form much used by Burns (aaabab) ; the eight line stanza (abababcc), as in Byron's Don Juan ; the nine line stanza (ababbcbcc), first used by Spenser in Faery Queene hence called as Spenserian stanza.

For a proper classification of stanzas, the relative lengths of the lines would also of course have to be taken into consideration.

It has been said earlier that rime, though an important accessory of English poetry, is not essential to it. This can be shown by the large amount of poetry which is without rime. The principal form of unrimed verse is the iambic pentameter, popularly known as 'blank verse'. But another forms also exist such as the trochaic tetrameter, the dactyllic hexameter etc etc.

The study of versification does not exhaust the interest of poetry on the technical side. There are innumerable other matters which are equally deserving of attention. There is the whole vast problem of poetic diction ; of the qualities which make it peculiarly strong or tender, passionate or beautiful ; of the specific differences between it and the diction of prose ; of the mysterious power of certain words or combination of words, whether through association or through sound, to stir the imagination and go home to the heart ; of the 'natural magic' of expression which belongs to the rare moments of highest inspiration, and that final felicity of phrasing by which language is steeped in meanings beyond the formal definitions of the lexicographer. Since the diction of poetry is inevitably figurative and allusive, those figures of speech and subtle suggestions and innuendos which are so important an element inits texture, have also to be considered from the point of view alike of their sources and of their aesthetic value.

Different plans may be suggested for definite courses of the reading of poetry. For example we may take up the work of a single poet, and our business will then be to analyse the content of his writings and investigate the salient qualities of his art ; to examine his literary ancestry and affiliations ; to trace to their sources the derivative elements in his thought and style ; and to consider his relations with the spirit and movements of his time. After this, we may pass from him to the other poets of his age, taking his work, point by point, as a foundation for comparison and contrast. Or we may make an historical study of some great body of poetry , like English poetry, following its ebb and flow from epoch to epoch, and the rise and decline of schools, methods, and traditions ; noting every significant change in subject matter, spirit, and style. We may devote our attention to the history of some great poetic form, such as the epic or the elegy etc. We may select some special theme and make this the basis of a study which will branch out in various directions, and connect itself at many points with the consideration of the development of literature at large.

However far afield we may pursue our researches, however wide and accurate our knowledge of the development and technique of poetry may become, however engrossing we may find the special problems of the historian and the critic, we must never forget that our chief purpose should be the enjoyment of poetry as poetry--- of poetry for its own sake, as a thing of beauty fraught with infinite meanings for those who have the capacity to feel and the heart to understand.

In our reading of poetry we should always remember that the poet appeals directly to the poet in ourselves, and that our real enjoyment of poetry therefore depends upon our own keenness of imaginative apprehension and emotional response.

To those who are born without any poetic sense at all, it is, of course, as futile to talk about the beauty and meaning of poetry as it is to talk about the beauty and meaning of music to those who are born without a musical ear.

We learn to appreciate through appreciation and to enjoy through enjoyment.

According to Prof. Butcher "the art of printing has done much to dull our literary perceptions. Words have a double virtue-- that which resides in the sense and that which resides in the sound. We miss much of the charm if the eye is made to do duty also for the ear. The words bereft of their vocal force, are but half alive on the printed page. The music of verse, when repeated only to the inward ear, comes as a faint echo."

The moral is clear. If poetry is 'musical speech' , if it owes much of its beauty, its magic, its peculiar power of stirring the feelings and arousing the imagination, to its verbal felicity and its varied melodies of metre and rime, then its full significance as poetry can be appreciated only when it addresses us through the ear. The silent perusal of the printed page will leave one of its principal secrets unsurprised. As much as possible, therefore, we should make it a practice to read poetry aloud.


with extensive inputs from An Introduction To The Study Of Literature by Hudson