chaos of the conflicting emotions of life is dissipated, the troubled waters of the mind are calmed, and out of the delightful peace comes an idealized expression of the very emotions which had been tearing us to pieces. As if by magic, the bitterness of pain, which is nothing more than an untempered excess of emotion, is transformed into melancholy pleasure; for the object of all poetry is to give pleasure. Or the dulness of monotony may be relieved by the light and joyous movement of a sprightly

verse.

In nature this restful tranquillity, which is the basis and beginning of all poetry, is represented by the regular beating of the waves upon the shore. The great swells come with mathematical regularity, but they are varied by an infinite number of little swells that come between. The rhythm of poetry acts on identically the same principle; and the good reader must learn to roll his words in with the monotonous yet varied regularity of waves beating on the shore.

Metre corresponds almost exactly to time in music, each metrical foot being a bar occupying for its pronunciation exactly the same time as the preceding, though it may consist of one to four syllables (a full note to four quarter-notes). As much time must be given to a onesyllable foot as to four syllables forming a foot; and, besides, punctuation marks must all be regarded, since they correspond to rests in music, and a rest counts as much in a bar as a note.

The first essential, then, in good reading of poetry is to catch the rhythmic movement of the metre and carry it along easily and naturally, as the fingers unconsciously move over the keys of the piano and pick out the accompaniment while the voice sings with the whole. heart and soul of the performer.

d true meaning, the tones of the voice will brate with a musical expression of the passion poet is expressing. Then it is that we realize e and wonderful a thing the sound of words is, member that no singer can exhibit the richness er of the human voice without the use of words. we pay little or no attention to the values ords as words, for we can enjoy a singer in a anguage almost as much as we can in our own ; it is the wonderful sound qualities of perfect rticulation itself that we find so entrancing, and lies the chief advantage of the voice over any cal instrument.

ppeal of poetry to the ear is the simplest appeal, of the many it makes; but we cannot perfectly end or appreciate any poem until we learn to it with musical perfection, or hear it skilfully d by another. But as the mechanical rendering atter of instinct, and depends upon the perfect hension of the meaning and value of the poem, not expect to attain even this till we go much and we shall never perfect it till we are complete s of the other imaginative elements.

II

the most obvious element in poetry is its appeal to , the next most apparent quality is its continuous

"An immortal instinct, deep within the spirit of man, is a sense of the Beautiful," says Poe. "This it is which ministers to his delight in the manifold forms and sounds and odors and sentiments amid which he exists. And just as the lily is repeated in the lake, or the eyes of Amaryllis in the mirror, so is the mere oral or written repetition of these forms and sounds and colors and odors and sentiments a duplicate source of delight." "Taste," he says, "informs us of the Beautiful, . while consciousness teaches us the obligation, and reason the expediency [of duty]. Taste contents herself with displaying the charms, waging war upon Vice solely on the ground of her deformity, her disproportion, her animosity to the fitting, to the appropriate, to the harmonious, — in a word, to Beauty."

...

...

"But this mere repetition is not poetry," he goes on to say. "There is still a something in the distance. . . It is the desire of the moth for the star. It is no mere appreciation of the Beauty which is before us, but a wild effort to reach the Beauty above. Inspired by an ecstatic prescience of the glories beyond the grave, we struggle, by multiform combinations among the things and thoughts of Time, to attain a portion of that Loveliness whose very elements, perhaps, appertain to eternity alone." Poe therefore defines poetry as the "rhythmic creation of Beauty." Keats, in his "Ode to a Grecian Urn," expresses almost the same idea when he says, –

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty; that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Aristotle, in his treatise on poetry, when he tells us the poet reproduces nature, insists that he can reproduce only the admirable; and when he portrays the evil and hideous he must perforce give them a kind of wicked beauty of their own. Commenting on this idea, Matthew Arnold points out the fact that Milton's Devil seems to be as admirable as his God, and that in this very fact we see how the poet in him rose above the theologian.

Poetry, therefore, creates a world in which evil is banished, in which there is nothing hideous or hateful; for the most obnoxious things are somehow harmonized and softened, recreated in the image of a glorious resurrection. We see life as it is, but life transformed, transmuted, elevated into a veritable realm of the ideal.

III

But this is not all. If the expression of passion in sound were all, poetry would be infinitely outclassed by music; and painting gives a more vivid and effective presentation of beautiful images. Poetry, however, with its musical accompaniment and its idealized beauty of expression, does what no other form of art can do, it speaks to the heart words of everlasting truth. It appeals to the intellect emotionally. "More and more," says Matthew Arnold, "mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us." "But," he adds, "the consolation and stay will be of power in proportion to the power of the criticism of life." Poetry is "interesting" because it adds to our knowledge of life. Matthew Arnold, in the original preface to his own poems, says:

...

"What is not interesting is that which does not add to our knowledge of any kind; that which is vaguely conceived and loosely drawn; a representation which is general, indeterminate, and faint, instead of being particular, precise, firm. . . . But more than this is demanded. It is demanded, not only that the poetic representation shall interest, but also that it shall inspirit and rejoice the reader; that it shall convey a charm and infuse delight. For the Muses, as Hesiod says, were born that they might be 'a forgetfulness of evils and a truce from cares'; and it is not enough that the Poet should add to the knowledge of men, it is required of him also that he should add to their happiness. 'All Art,' says Schiller, 'is dedicated to joy; and there is no higher or more serious problem than how to make men happy.' The right Art is that alone which creates the highest enjoyment."

And elsewhere he asserts, "The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry."

The mission of poetry as a truth-bringer is to create ideals of thought, conceptions of the noble and great, which need no proof or argument, because they are their own proof.

"Poetry is to science what faith is to religion," says Wordsworth, stating the comparison in detail "between religion, making up the deficiencies of reason by faith, and poetry, passionate for the instruction of reason; between religion, whose element is infinitude and whose ultimate trust is the Supreme of things, submitting herself to circumscription, and reconciled to substitutions, and poetry, ethereal and transcendent, yet incapable of sustaining her existence without sensuous incarnation."

In his too little known "Defence of Poetry" Shelley has stated the matter with perfect simplicity, yet in language of beauty. He says:

"Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses. The truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations; the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified themselves with the objects of their admiration. Ethical science arranges the elements which poetry has created, and propounds schemes and proposes examples of civil and domestic life; nor is it for want of admirable doctrines that men hate and despise and censure and deceive and subjugate one another. But poetry acts in another and diviner manner. awakens and enlarges the mind itself by rendering it the receptacle of a thousand unapprehended combinations of thought. Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar; it reproduces all that it represents, and the impersonations clothed in its Elysian light stand thenceforward in the minds of those who have once

It