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Prelude to Part First of "The Vision of Sir Launfal"

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Love Serviceable - from "The Angel in the House"

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Too Late! too Late! - from "The Prince's Progress

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KIPLING:

Recessional
Danny Deever

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General Introduction

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THE READING OF POETRY

OETRY is truth carried alive into the heart by passion," says Wordsworth. Science and philosophy may speak to the reason a thousand years, yet if we do not feel the truth it will not be ours. Moreover, there are truths so delicate that they wholly escape the analysis of reason, and if we know them at all we must learn them from the teachings of the heart. Such especially must we seek in poetry. And of course any attempt to "explain" poetry is a contradiction in terms; for if we do not feel its beauty and its power and the truth it would convey, we never shall comprehend them. Some people are "poetry blind," - if I may be allowed the phrase, - and all of us are more or less blind to the subtle and iridescent rays of nature and the human heart and their reflection in poetry. In the reading of poetry, therefore, one of our tasks is to find out what we cannot understand, and pass it by for that which

we can.

In the days of the Greeks there were two kinds of literature, poetry and oratory. To-day epic and dramatic poetry has been superseded by the novel. Wordsworth. almost demonstrated in one of his prefaces that most

of his poems ought to have been written in prose instead of verse. But no prose has been invented, and it is doubtful if any ever will be, which can produce the effect of the song or short lyric. Prose can rise to heights of passion, but it seems to take a long time to do it. For swift and intense expression of passion and emotion, for delicacy and variety of feelings and perceptions and exaltations and transcending flames, the song, with its appeal to the ear as well as to the imaginative eye, and the emotional comprehension of the intellect, seems likely never to be superseded. It was Poe's theory that a true poem could not be over a hundred lines in length, because the human mind could not endure a longer strain of such intense feeling as characterizes a perfect poetic composition. For the lower levels of emotion he believed that prose, in the perfection of its modern development, was superior.

Modern critics seem to agree that any attempt to explain poetry is likely to kill it, since cold reason is the exact antithesis of the passionate emotion which is the very substance of a poem. Yet they do not seem to have discovered any other means of studying poetry than by explanations, and forever go on analyzing and explaining. And, moreover, they seem much more engrossed with estimating the comparative merit of a poem than with enjoying it. "A poet," says Shelley, "is a nightingale, who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why."

First, let us consider in a general way how poetry makes its appeal, and how we may tune our ears to hear it.

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To be fully appreciated, a poem must be read aloud; and the art of reading poetry aloud is as difficult to learn as the art of singing.

The whole metrical form of a poem is devised to make a musical appeal to the ear and to help in arousing emotions in precisely the same way that song does. The flow and rhythm are like the setting, the accompaniment, or background, out of whose cloudy forms the imagination will presently shape more or less definite pictures and state truths in the simple, direct language of children, which we believe because we are made to feel that they are in harmony with all nature and all life.

Wordsworth says:

"I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity; the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. In this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is generally carried on."

What Wordsworth means is that the poet cannot write a good poem about love, for example, while he is in love; but after he has recovered from his original emotion, and his mind becomes perfectly placid and tranquil, he begins to think of his original emotion of love until it comes back to him and he feels it so keenly that he can write a poem that will, by its very intensity, produce the emotion again in the reader.

The experience of the reader when he reads and enjoys a poem is very similar. The sound, the regular wave-like movement of the rhythm, the subtle music of the words, produce a feeling of tranquillity, the confused

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