LESSON 79. POETRY. Two of the three great divisions of discourse we have spoken of oral prose, which addresses itself to the will, and leads to action; and written prose, which is mainly intended to instruct the intellect. We come now to the second division of written, and to the last of the three divisions of all, discourse POETRY.-Poetry is that division of discourse which is rhythmical and metrical, and is addressed to the feelings. Poetry differs from prose in three particulars (1) in its mission, (2) in its style, and (3) in its form. I. ITS MISSION.-The mission of poetry is to bring sustenance to that part of our nature which lies in between the intellect and the will—that part which enjoys and which suffers, which is open to every disturbing influence and responds to every touch of impression—the feelings. Poetry, the most artistic department of literature, is near of kin, in its effects, to music and to painting. The poet is an artist, sensitive to impressions to which ordinary nerves do not tingle. His eye detects a beauty, and a meaning in things-a beauty and a meaning which escape ordinary vision. His effort is to put this meaning into a picture, in which words are his colors, bringing all parts of it into symmetry, knowing that the many, blind to what he sees, will see and appreciate what he does. (The most of poetry is too ethereal in spirit to inhabit a body so gross as that of prose. Prose is masculine and matter-of-fact, the "common drudge 'tween man and man." You can harness it to the light vehicles of conversation, you can hitch it to the lumbering trains of argument. Homely, serviceable, and built to wear prose is a draught-horse, and will drag your heavy drays of thought from premise to conclusion. But it lacks the grace of form and of movement which you demand for your "turnouts" on the boulevard and in the park Poetry is feminine. It takes to itself a delicacy of form, a warmth of coloring, and a richness of expression alien to prose. Poetry deals with things as October light with the objects upon which it falls, painting everything it touches in its most bewitching colors. Nothing is so insignificant that it has not a poetic side to it, and may not furnish the poet a subject for his verse, and nothing is too high for the poet's reach. His eye catches glimpses and suggestions of outward and of inward beauty; and, in the play of imagination, he works them up now into studies and now into finished pictures, which cling to the walls of our memories, and stream their gracious influences down upon our feelings in our dark hours and in all our hours, a never failing source of consolation and delight. Of all literature, poetry has in it the least of objective purpose, the most of spontaneity. No great moral purpose, no purpose of mere instruction is consciously cherished by the poet as he writes. Some phase of outward beauty, some deed disclosing inward grace, or some glimpse of spiritual loveliness has been vouchsafed him, and he hastens to give form to his conception before it vanishes; he is concerned only that he may fitly embody in verse the sweet vision that has dawned upon him. In just the ratio that the poet aims to give instruction or to turn any wheel of reform, great or small, does he abdicate his own function and seek to usurp that of the prose-writer. Not that poetry may not teach, may not even preach; it may and does, but it does these things, when it does them, incidentally. It cannot subordinate its own proper vocation of ministering to the feelings to any other purpose without proving false to uns to me alits own mission, false to the mission of all fine art. تشر But no thoughtful person sets a light value upon this incidental work which all art, which poetry, its chief branch, performs upon our intellect and upon our moral nature. We are not to disparage poetry as an enlightening and as a reforming agency because it works intentionally neither upon the intellect nor upon the will. It works effectively upon both, even if incidentally—all the more effectively, as it would be easy to show, because incidentally. Besides, the intellect takes more than miller's toll of the thought poetry contains, it appropri ates the whole; and the feelings, to which poetry intentionally ministers, react upon our intellectual faculties, and rouse them from any lethargy into which they may have fallen. And the feelings lie close, on the other side, to the will, which never acts save as they furnish the occasion and the motive. II. ITS STYLE.-1. Words.-Poetry does not confine itself to the language of conversation or of common life. It selects words for their beauty of sound and association, for their picturesqueness, for their elevation—rare words often, words that are even obsolete in prose. 2. Arrangement.-It uses the transposed order in a de- 1 gree forbidden in conversation, unpardonable even in impassioned oratory. It condenses clauses into single epithets. "Imperfect periods are frequent; elisions are perpetual; and many of the minor words, which would be deemed essential in prose, are dispensed with." 3 3. Imagery.-Spencer says, "Metaphors, similes, hy perboles, and personifications are the poet's colors which he has liberty to employ almost without limit. We characterize as 'poetical' the prose which uses these appliances of language with any frequency; and condemn it as 'over-florid' or ' affected' long before they occur with the profusion allowed in verse.' Direction. Study this extract from Lowell's "Vision of Sir Laun fal," and note how these three points are illustrated ན Within the hall are song and laughter, 3 The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap Hunted to death in its galleries blind; Now pausing, now scattering away as in fear, III. ITS FORM.-In treating of the form of poetry, we shall group all we have to say, under the three heads of rhythm, metre, and rhyme. 1. RHYTHM.-Rhythm is that arrangement of words which allows the alternate stress and remission of the voice in reading. For each sequence of stress and remission, of strong and weak impulse, of the voice, two or three syllables are regularly required. The rhythm-accent is the stroke, stress, or strong impulse of the voice which falls upon certain syllables. In English and in other modern poetry, the rhythm-accent must agree with the word-accent- must fall upon the syllable of the word which is accented in prose. For this reason ours is called an accentual rhythm. In Latin and Greek the rhythm-accent falls upon a long syllable, a syllable whose vowel is long by nature or by position, a syllable requiring a long time for its enunciation Hence ancient rhythm is said to be based upon quantity, It is thought that these two rhythmical systems, theirs and ours, are so unlike as to be in antagonism. But we must remember that, in the ordinary pronunciation of an English word, we dwell longer upon the accented syllable than upon one not accented; that the syllable becomes long by this detention of the voice upon it, and hence presents itself as long for the rhythm-accent. Rhythm, then, in English, even if we call it accentual, rests ultimately, as in Latin and Greek, upon time, or quantity, the syllable receiving the rhythm-accent taking long time for its enunciation, the unaccented syllable or syllables short time. And what if it should turn out, as our greatest American philologist, Prof. Hadley, virtually claims, that, in their ordinary speech, the Greeks did not pronounce the accented syllable with any or, if any, with any striking increase of force! It is inconceivable that, in reciting his poetry, the Greek or Roman should give both rhythmic-stress and word-stress when these did not fall upon the same syllable; and it is also inconceivable that he should neglect the word-stress, in the recitation, if, in ordinary speech, it was as marked in his language as in ours. In the one case there would be no propor tion, no music, in the verse thus read; in the other, the word, robbed of its customary strong accent, would not be recognized by the hearer. We conclude, then, that as with us, the rhythm-accent, falling upon the syllable having the word-accent, is in harmony with it, so in the Greek, the word-accent not being distinguished by |