Your figure is a good one. You have no natural defects in
the organs of your speech. Your address may be engaging and
your manner of speaking graceful, if you will. So, that if
they are not so, neither I, nor the world, can attribute it to
anything but your lack of parts. Words were given us to
communicate our ideas by, and there must be something incon-
ceivably absurd in uttering them in such a manner that people
cannot understand them, or will not desire to understand them.
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"A poem is a monuement to a moment of insight."
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"Poetry is the fiery index to the genius of the age."
Quotations from
(1) Contemporary verse is not greater than the verse of the past.
Each has its own peculiar virtues and special beauties. Modern
verse, while it may not be better than the old, is better for
us because it iterprets in a living language, a living world,
and from that vantage point looks into the dark abyss of the
uncreated.
(2) Science and Poetry.
Science seeks to improve the conditions of living. Poetry
Which speaks to the quickest understanding with the authority
of the deepest self, is still, as it always has been, the
delight of heroic minds.
The scientist erects hypotheses which enable man
to weigh and measure the physical universe and to abstract
laws which will prosper him in his conflicts with his environ-
ment, his fellows and himself.
Poetry communicates the emotions of these men in these
Conflicts and in their resolution. It is, however, no less
than science purposive, practical and precise.
The purpose of science is to reduce the evils of
life and to develop the goods it offers. The purpose of the
poet is to give quality to living, and so to help man to
realize the world both inner and outer, more fully.
(3) The effect of poetry on an audience.
Only indirectly, only gradually, can a great poem work on a
growing audience to create new ways of felling and changed
modes of behavior. But without effecting any change it still
pleases by its intrinsic felicity. It is like the sun whose
quickening powers are no less active because they may be
ignored by the man whose body it warms and whose eye it kindles.
(4) Poetry is the stimulus to the good life; it is an element
of the good life.
(5) Poetry is rooted in emotion, fed upon fact and shaped
by imagination.
(6) Poetry seeks a hold upon reality, and the closeness of its
approach is the test of its success. It has its roots in our
savage past and so speaks to the oldest instincts of man. But
also it communicates the experience of those whose imaginative
faculty makes them the sensitive antennae of the race.
of years before there was a written word. It is said that the
old kings realized its importance--that a king would rather
give up his salt than go without his gleemen.
Poetry is not the caviar or loives at the feast of life.
It is the solid center--the heart, the bread, the meat at the
banquet of life.