a single word, as when Marullus, in Julius Caesar, addresses the Roman mob. You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! Or it may be more elaborate, as: This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. With lifted teeth, as if to bite! - JOAQUIN MILLER, Columbus. Personification is a figure in which things without life, or abstract ideas, are given the qualities of living persons. But look, the morn, in russet mantle clad, SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet. But, O Grief! where hast thou led me? SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar. I heard the trailing garments of the Night LONGFELLOW, Hymn to the Night. Apostrophe addresses the absent as if present. Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour. - HALLECK, To Francis Rodman Drake. Hyperbole is exaggeration for the sake of finer effect. Like the fierce northern hurricane – O'HARA, Bivouac of the Dead. As a result of the careful attention to the expression of his ideas which is enforced upon the poet by the Economy of very nature of his work, all good poetry Language is characterized by what may be termed economy of language. It uses the exact word, the "inevitable phrase," and thus tends to compactness and condensation. Thus, too, it becomes suggestive and thought-provoking; many poems are a collection of hints, as it were, which stimulate the imagination. This matter of economy may be tested by writing out in clear prose the full meaning of a poem like Emerson's Terminus, or Poe's Dream-Land. The prose version will not only lack the power and the beauty of the original, but will occupy considerably more space in expressing the same ideas. Our brief discussion of poetry leads us, finally, to one other quality the mark of all true poetry which cannot be exactly defined. The "Inspiration" poet must not only give beautiful pictures and set forth noble and stimulating ideas. To all this he must add something else that indefinable thing which Wordsworth spoke of as The light that never was on sea or land, The consecration, and the Poet's dream. Genius, inspiration - term it what we will; in the last analysis it is something that no one can explain. But it is a real thing; it is present in all great poetry; we can feel it if we are willing to enter with due reverence into the treasure-house opened for us. We turn now to the divisions into which poetry may be separated. Speaking broadly, there are four such Classes of classes: narrative, dramatic, lyric, and Poetry didactic. These, of course, are not mutually exclusive; they do not stand apart according to a rigid classification. Thus the epic, for example, shows touches of the dramatic; the drama usually contains lyric poetry. But is useful to observe certain divisions, based upon certain dominant characteristics. Of the four classes mentioned, didactic poetry is the least important, and may be dismissed with a word. It is written for the definite purpose of teaching a moral or inculcating a principle; perhaps, strictly considered, it is not poetry at all, for the poet becomes a preacher. The other classes may be considered more fully. We must remember that different arrangements are possible, but the one which has been. adopted here will serve to show plainly the characteristic features of the several types. Narrative Narrative poetry is poetry that tells a story. It is concerned with what happens, and takes little or no account of reasons or causes. The tone is "objective" that is, the interest lies in the story rather than in the writer of the story. Under narrative poetry are grouped the "epic," the "ballad," the "tale," the "romance," and the "idyl." The epic is "a poem celebrating, in stately verse, the real or mythical exploits of great personages, heroes, or demigods." It consists of a series of episodes, loosely strung together and unified by the personality of the one strong central character. In Homer's Iliad, for instance, we are told of "the wrath of Achilles" and its results; in the Odyssey, of the voyagings of Odysseus, the "far-wanderer." These are the Greek national epics. The type is not common: in the whole of English literature there are only two true examples Beowulf, the epic of the Saxons before they came to England, and Milton's Paradise Lost. A "ballad" is a story told in the simplest way. Examples of the old ballads are Sir Patrick Spens and the Robin Hood cycle; of the modern Ballad, variety, Kipling's Ballad of East and West and Whittier's Skipper Ireson's Ride. The term "romance" is used somewhat loosely. Originally it referred to the long rhymed stories of the Middle Ages; in modern times it is represented by work like Scott's Marmion or The Lay of the Last Minstrel. The "tale," also, has a somewhat indeterminate application. The masterpiece in the kind is Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; other tales are grouped together in Morris's The Earthly Paradise, Longfellow's Tales of a Wayside Inn, or Whittier's Tent on the Beach. For the "idyl," one naturally turns to Tennyson, whose Idylls of the King afford the finest examples. Pure narrative poetry has been very successfully written in recent years by John Masefield, in his three remarkable poems, The Story of a Roundhouse, Reynard the Fox, and Right Royal. Descriptive narrative - where we are interested in the series of pictures rather than occurs in Goldsmith's Deserted Village in the story Dramatic poetry includes the great body of verse written for presentation on the stage. Composed primarily to be acted, it possesses certain features such as the rapid interchange Dramatic of conversation and the development of character which differentiate it from the other types; the whole thing, moreover, moves swiftly and compactly to a definite climax. The noblest examples of dramatic poetry are found in Shakespeare's plays; less important members of the class are the "closet dramas," such as Shelley's Prometheus Unbound and Byron's Manfred, which are not intended for the material theatre. In the same category should be included "dramatic monologues" like Browning's My Last Duchess and The Bishop Orders His Tomb. In these there is only one speaker, yet the presence of others is implied by the nature of the monologue. The lyric is a short poem which turns upon "some single thought, feeling, or situation." Unlike narrative verse, it is "subjective": it reThe Lyric flects the personal feelings of the author often his deepest emotions. Intended originally to be sung to the "lyre" (whence its name), the lyric retains as one of its characteristic features a distinctly musical quality. This quality is very noticeable in the little songs scattered through the plays of Shakespeare, and in the beautiful poems by such writers as Shelley, Keats, and Byron included in collections like |