be masterfully described with no ethical intent, for we are interested in the grand spectacle of a man whom the Gods have made mad, for madness is potential in all of us. There is the ecstasy of the lover in his rapture for his mistress, and in his transformed nature. We are moved by the delicacy of his sentiment, his chivalry, his sacrifice, we are overcome by his sorrows and his misfortunes. There is the ecstasy of the love of nature where the majesty of this universe is set out in its glory. There is the ecstasy of the lover of beauty for its own sake, and of the artist in the pursuit of his work, and of the reader and of him who listens to music, of him who sees artistic pictures. There is the ecstasy of the scientist in his pursuit of truth, and of the inventor in transforming the face of the globe. We cry out for ecstasy; it is the substance of our lives; even though, often in our pursuit of pleasant ecstasy, we are launched into tragedy. We are hungry for a happy life of the emotions. It is this which makes lovers and friends and parents of us. It is this which makes us poets, and it is the poet in ourselves that we always hunt out. I hope our study has helped us to distinguish the higher from the lower forms of ecstasy, to find poetry in prose, and to differentiate poetry from verse, wherein there is no ecstasy but various conventions, like inversion, poetic diction, rhyme, metre, figures of speech, parallelisms, technique, and all forms of rhythm and repeats. That much of the best of the world's poetry has made abundant use of these mechanisms has led the critics to confuse poetry with its conventions. But the ecstasy was forgotten, and the emotional and intellectual value of the poem was overlooked. It was thought because the masters subscribed slavishly to the conventions that they be came poets because of them, whereas they were poets first and last because of the ecstasy, sometimes with the aid of the conventions and sometimes despite them. That these mechanisms will always be used in some degree is certain, but the most natural poetry will be that which uses them moderately, irregularly and only when the emotions and the ideas naturally clothe themselves in them. Poetry and prose then are not contradictory, but prose becomes poetry when the element of ecstasy is present. We use the word prosaic in a sense, it is true, which means destitute of imagination or emotion; we even call verse of this kind prosaic. But a work in prose may be poetical, and one in verse be prosaic, and science, philosophy and morality become poetry, though in the form of prose, when bathed in the spirit of ecstasy. And the highest form of poetry is that wherein the ecstasy springs from our nature's most human and most admirable side. After having learned that poetry is more natural without metre or a pattern, that it may be in prose with or without rhythm, that it may have a social message, that it is the product of the unconscious, that it is related to dreams in being an imaginary fulfilled wish of the poet, that it acts as a relief to the writer and the reader, that it is always personal and lyric, that it is synonymous with expression in the poet's mind, that its chief characteristic is passion, imagination or ecstasy, that its qualities are often enhanced rather than destroyed by the presence of intellect or morality, that it is an emotional spirit holding literature in suffusion instead of being a branch of literature, we shall find that most of the old definitions of poetry exclude a great deal of the world's best poetry, and include much that is not poetry. INDEX OF AUTHORS Abu ali al Qali, 222 Abu '1 Ala al Maarri, 216, 217 Abu 'l Atahiya, 216, 218 Abu Zayd, 215 Elfric, 108, 114 Eschylus, 15, 27,160 Carlyle, Thomas, 53, 72, 134, Cowper, William, 134 Croce, 15, 28, 81, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 50, 239 De Ślane, MacGuckin, 203, 209, De Vigny, 166 Demosthenes, 24, 119, 229 Dickens, Charles, 53, 72, 84, 119, 181 Eaton, Walter P., 115 Emerson, R. W., 23, 53, 81, 92, 93, 94, 121, 186, 200 Fairchild, A. H., 200 Fénelon, 86, 161 Flint, F. S., 122 France, Anatole, 201, 232 Freud, 15, 28, 135, 167, 181, 185, 189, 199 Froude, 137 Galsworthy, John, 71, 155 Gibbon, 137 Giovanitti, Arthur, 158 Gosse, Edmund, 64 Gray, Thomas, 19 Gummere, Professor, 44, 198 Ha Levi, Jehudah, 105, 172 Hardy, Thomas, 53, 71, 121, 181, 244 Hariri, 214, 215, 218 Hauptmann, 71, 155, 156, 200 Hazlitt, 49, 77, 131, 185, 193 Heine, Heinrich, 18, 31, 49, 70, Henley, Walter, 117 Henry, O., 130, 230 Herodotus, 48 Hewlett, Maurice, 71, 116 Holmes, O. W., 50, 168, 186 Homer, 13, 15, 62, 80, 82, 93, 137, 167, 236, 238 Horace, 72, 128 Hovey, Richard, 118 Hudson, W. H., 71 Hugo, Victor, 58, 87, 140, 154 Hunt, Leigh, 234 Ibn Abi Rabia, Omar, 207 Ibn Gebirol, Solomon, 172 Ibn Ishaq, 223 Ibn Khaldun, 203, 204, 205, 222, Ibn Khallikans, 209 Ibn Pakuda, Bachya, 172 Ibn ul Farid, Umar, 220 Ibn ul Mutazz, 223 Ibn Zaydun, 219 Ibsen, Henrik, 15, 38, 48, 71, Israeli, Isaac, 183 Jacob, Cary F., 46 Jahiz, 222 Jalalu '1 Din Rumi, 22 Johnson, Samuel, 113, 185 Kant, 229 Kaplan, Jacob H., 37 Keats, John, 18, 128, 138, 154, 173, 233, 235, 247 Keble, John, 187-190 Kempis, Thomas á, 20 Khalil Ahmad, 221 Khansa, 214 La Rochefoucauld, 167 Lee, A. H. E., 23 Leopardi, 143 Lespinasse, Madame, 53 Lessing, G. E., 62, 63, 179, 239 Lewis, Sinclair, 232 Lincoln, Abraham, 60 Livy, 48, 120, 137 |