An Answer to the Question 'What Is Poetry?': Including Remarks on Versification (Classic Reprint)

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FB&C Limited, 2016 M09 16 - 124 páginas
Excerpt from An Answer to the Question 'What Is Poetry?': Including Remarks on Versification

Poetry is a passion,1 because it seeks the deepest impressions; and because it must undergo, in order to convey them.

It is a passion for truth, because without truth the impression would be false or defective.

It is a passion for beauty, because its office is to exalt and refine by means of pleasure, and because beauty is nothing but the loveliest form of pleasure.

It is a passion for power, because power is impression triumphant, whether over the poet, as desired by himself, or over the reader, as affected by the poet.

It embodies and illustrates its. Impressions by imagination, or images of the Objects of which it treats, and other images brought in to throw light on those objects, in order that it may enjoy and impart the feeling of their truth in its utmost conviction and affluence.

It illustrates them by fancy, which is a lighter play Of imagination, or the feeling Of analogy coming short Of seriousness, in order that it may laugh with what it loves, and show how it can decorate it with fairy ornament.

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