POETRY . In See also:

• MODERN

Under See also:

• VERSE (from Lat. versus, literally a line or furrow drawn by turning the plough, from vertere, and afterwards signifying an arrangement of syllables into feet)

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

• AGE (Fr. age, through late Lat. aetaticum, from aetas)

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

• SYLLOGISM (Gr. ovAAoytvµos, from en', and Xb-yor, an argument resulting from combination, i.e. of premises)

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

• MENTAL

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 (from Lat. crates, a hurdle)

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
• DIONYSIUS (c. 432–367 B.C.)

While one See also:

• GROUP

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

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

• INFLUENCE (Late Lat. influentia, from influere, to flow in)

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

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

• CATALOGUE (a Fr. adaptation of the Gr. KaraXoyos, a register, from Karalyety, to enrol or pick out)

That the ancients were right in this could well be shown by a history of poetry: music and the lyrical function of the poet began together, but here, as in other things, the progress of art from the implicit to the explicit has separated the two. Every art has its special function, has a certain work which it can do better than any one of its See also:

• SISTER

481 (where the sudden sinking of a stricken ox is rendered by means of rhythm), and such lines as Georg. ii. 441, where, by means of verbal sounds, the gusts of wind about a See also:

• TREE (0. Eng. treo, treow, cf. Dan. tree, Swed. Odd, tree, trd, timber; allied forms are found in Russ. drevo, Gr. opus, oak, and 36pv, spear, Welsh derw, Irish darog, oak, and Skr. dare, wood)
• TREE, SIR HERBERT BEERBOHM (1853- )

With one class of poets, fine as is perhaps the melody, it is made subservient to outline or to colour; with the other class colour and outline both yield to metre. The See also:

• CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

And perhaps, like Carlyle, having the good sense to see his true function, he himself desisted from See also:

• WRITING
• WRITING (the verbal noun of " to write," O. Eng. writan, to inscribe)

But if poetry falls behind music in rhythmic See also:

• SCOPE (through Ital. scopo, aim, purpose, intent, from Gr. o'KOaos, mark to shoot at, aim, o ic07reiv, to see, whence the termination in telescope, microscope, &c.)

Wherefore let man See also:

• HARVEST (A.S. hcerfest " autumn," O.H. Ger. herbist, possibly through an old Teutonic root representing Lat. car pere, " to pluck ")

Hate, though voluble perhaps, as Clytaemnestra's when hate is at that red-heat glow which the poet can render, changes in a moment whenever that redness has been fanned to hatred's own last complexion—whiteness as of See also:

• IRON [symbol Fe, atomic weight 55.85 (0=16)]

So vast a subject as this, however, is beyond our scope, and we can only point to the familiar instance of the troubadours and the trouveres and then pass on. With the See also:

• TROUVERE

For the achievement of all pure lyric poetry, such as the ode, the song, the See also:

• ELEGY

Still he feels that the Muse loves him exceedingly. She takes away his eyesight, but she gives him sweet song. And his song is very sweet, very sad, and very beautiful; but it is all about the world within his own soul—its sorrows, joys, fears and aspirations. With regard to the second class the impulse here is no doubt a kind of egoism too; yet the poets of this class are all of a:different temper from the pure lyrists. They have a wide imagination; but it is still relative, still egoistic. They have splendid eyes, but eyes that never get beyond seeing general, universal humanity (typified by themselves) in the imagined situation. Not even to these is it given to break through that law of centrality by which every " me " feels itself to be the central " me "—the only " me " of the universe, See also:

• ROUND (O. Fr. rond, Lat. rotundus, the Fr. is the source also of Du. rond; Ger., Swed., Dan. and Nor. rond)

And again, finely as Sophocles has conceived the See also:

• CHARACTER (Gr. xapareri7p, from xap&crew, to scratch)

And, as regards the earlier poets of Asia, it was not till the shadowy demigods and heroes of the Asiatic races crossed the See also:

• CAUCASUS

If this is really so we may perhaps find a basis for a classification of poetry and of poets. That all poets must be singers has already been maintained. But singers seem to be divisible into three classes: first the pure lyrists, each of whom can with his one voice sing only one tune; secondly the epic poets, save Homer, the bulk of the narrative poets, and the quasi-dramatists, each of whom can with his one voice sing several tunes; and thirdly the true dramatists, who, having, like the See also:

• NIGHTINGALE (O. Eng. Nihtegale, literally " singer of the night ")
• NIGHTINGALE, FLORENCE (1820–191o)

Such an example is the famous speech of See also:

• LADY (0. Eng. hlaefdige, Mid. Eng. ldfdi, lavedi; the first part of the word is hldf, loaf, bread, as in the corresponding hldford, lord; the second part is usually taken to be from the root dig-, to knead, seen also in " dough "; the sense development fr

Instances of absolute vision in Shakespeare See also:

• CROWD, CROUTH, CROWTH

It may seem bold to say that the drama of Goethe is informed by egoistic imagination only—assuredly the See also:

• PRISON (derived through the Fr. from the Lat. prehensio, seizure)

He goes so far as to say that, even in reading as well as in See also:

• REPRESENTATION

Yet it has the See also:

• SANCTION (Lat. sanctia, from sancire, to decree or ordain)

Of this dramatic subtlety Sophocles is perhaps the greatest master; and certain critics have been led to speak as though irony were heart-thought of Sophoclean drama. But the suggestiveness of Sophocles is pathetic (as See also:

• PROFESSOR (the Latin noun formed from the verb profiteri, to declare publicly, to acknowledge, profess)

It is owing to the dramatic imagination displayed in the Iliad that it is impossible to say, from internal See also:

• EVIDENCE (Lat. evidentia, evideri, to appear clearly)

And why? Because throughout the Iliad the dramatic imagination shown is of the first order; and, if we are to suppose a multiplicity of authors for the poem, we must also suppose that ages before the time of Pericles there existed a group of dramatists more nearly akin to the masters of the Great Drama, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Shakespeare, than any group that has ever existed since. Yet it is equally difficult to find a place for it amongst the epics of art. In the matter of artistic See also:

• MOTIVE (from Lat. movere, to move)

That Firdausi was capable of working from a centre not only artistic but philosophic his Yusuf and Zuleskha shows; and if we consider what was the artistic temper of the Persians in Firdausi's time, what indeed has been that temper during the whole of the See also:

• MAHOMMEDAN

And the history of poetry shows that once begin to tamper with the central thought around which any group of incidents has crystallized and the entire story becomes thereby rewritten, as we have seen in the case of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. Of the motive of his own epic, after he had abandoned the motive of Vondel, Milton had as little permanent grasp as Virgil had of his. As regards the Odyssey, however, we need scarcely say that its motive is merely artistic. not philosophic. And now we come to philosophic motive. The artist's power of thought is properly shown not in the direct enunciation of ideas but in mastery over motive. Here Aeschylus is by far the greatest figure in Western poetry—a See also:

• PROOF (in M. Eng. preove, proeve, preve, &°c., from O. Fr . prueve, proeve, &c., mod. preuve, Late. Lat. proba, probate, to prove, to test the goodness of anything, probus, good)

The motive of Paradise Lost is assailed with much vigour by Victor Hugo in his poem Religions et See also:

• RELIGION
• RELIGION, FOLKLORE, CUSTOM

Its See also:

• RAINBOW

See also:

• BUDDHISM

It no epic, Eastern or Western, can exist without a struggle between might perhaps be said indeed that the Great Lyric is purely good and evil—and a struggle upon apparently equal terms—it Hebrew. But, although we could hardly expect to find it among must not be supposed that the warring of conflicting forces which those whose language, complex of syntax and alive with self-is the motive of Eastern epic has much real relation to the warring of conflicting forces which is the motive of Western epic. conscious inflexions, bespeaks the scientific knowingness of the And, as regards the machinery of epic, there is, we suspect, a Western mind, to call the temper of the Great Lyric broadly deeper significance than is commonly apprehended in the fact that " Asiatic " would be rash. It seems to belong as a birthright the Satan or Shaitan of the Eastern world becomes in Vondel and to those descendants of See also:

• SHEM (Hebrew for " name, renown, posterity ")

But, whatever may be said of demons is not to See also:

• REBEL, JOHANN PETER (176o-1826)

Whatever may have been said to the contrary, See also:

• ENTHUSIASM

We do not agree with those who assert that irregular metres are of necessity inimical to poetic art. On the contrary, we believe that in modern prosody the arrangement of the rhymes and the length of the lines in any rhymed metrical passage may be deter-See also:

• MINED

As to Wordsworth's magnificent " Ode on Intimations of See also:

• IMMORTALITY (Lat. in-, not, mortalis, mortal, from mors, death)

What is requisite is that the ear of the reader should catch a great metrical scheme, of which these three varieties of movement are necessary parts—should catch, in short, that inevitableness of structure upon which we have already touched. In order to justify a poet in writing a poem in three different kinds of movement, governed by no musical and no terpsichorean necessity, a necessity of another kind should make itself apparent; that is, the metrical See also:

• WAVE

' Never before these songs were sung and never since did the human soul, in the grip of a fiery passion, utter a cry like hers; and from the executive point of view, in directness, in lucidity, in that high imperious verbal See also:

• ECONOMY

We may say, however, that some of Hugo's odes are truly magnificent. ' As a pure lyrist his place among the greatest poets of the world is very high. Here, though writing in an inferior language, he ranks with the greatest masters of Greece, of England, and of See also:

• GERMANY
• GERMANY (Ger. Deutschland)

With regard to the stornello, many critics seem to confound it with the rispetto, a very different kind of song. The Italian rispetto consists of a stanza of inter-rhyming lines ranging from six to ten in number, but often not exceeding eight. The Tuscan and Umbrian stornello is much shorter, consisting, indeed, of a hemistich naming some natural object which suggests the motive of the little poem. The nearest approach to the Italian stornello appears to be, not the rispetto, but the Welsh triban. Perhaps the mere difficulty of rhyming in English and the facility of rhyming in Italian must be taken into account when we inquire why there is nothing in See also:

• SCOTLAND
• SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF
• SCOTLAND, EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF

Between songs to be sung and songs to be read there is in our time a difference as wide as that which exists between plays for the closet and plays for the boards. Heartiness and melody—the two requisites of a song which can never he dispensed with—can rarely be compassed, it seems, by one and the same individual. In both these qualities the Elizabethan poets stand pre-eminent, though even with them the melody is not so singable as it might be made. Since their time heartiness has, perhaps, been a Scottish rather than an English endowment of the song-writer. It is difficult to imagine an Englishman writing a song like " Tullochgorum " or a song like " Maggie See also:

• LAUDER
• LAUDER, SIR THOMAS DICK
• LAUDER, WILLIAM (d. 1771)

The truth is that in song-writing it is quite as important, in a consonantal language like ours, to attend to the consonants as to the vowels; and perhaps the first thing to avoid in writing English songs is the frequent recurrence of the sibilant. But this applies to all the brief and quintessential forms of poetry, such as the sonnet, the elegy, &c. As to the elegy—a form of poetic art which has more relation to the objects of the external world than the song, but less rela- T6e 6iegy. tion to these than the stornello—its scope seems to be wide indeed, as practised by such various writers as See also:

• TYRTAEUS

Many poets only attend to their sibilants when these clog the rhythm. To write even the briefest song without a sibilant would be a tour de force; to write a good one would no doubt be next to impossible. It is singular that the only metricist who ever attempted it was John Thelwall, the famous " See also:

• CITIZEN (a form corrupted in Eng., apparently by analogy with " denizen," from O. Fr. citeain, mod. Fr. citoyen)