t
is vibrating, and that sensibility lends a corresponding movement to his
language. When a poet says of himself--

I do but sing because I must,
And pipe but as the linnets sing,

he expresses the truth that rhythm and melody lend themselves
spontaneously to an inspiring thought. Poetry, like good music, comes of
the possession of the movement. The mood in which poetry is conceived is
the same mood in which men burst forth without premeditation into song.
The thoughts which come to the poet in his exaltation are, therefore,
naturally wedded to melody and cadence.

Moreover, not only is a rhythmic music the natural utterance of
impassioned thought for him who speaks. It is the necessary instrument
for inducing the proper, the receptive, mood in him who hears. We know
how it is with music, when all the air is vibrating and chanting with
some vast organ-swell. We know how we are stirred to our inmost depths
simply by mere harmony and sequence of sounds. We do not know why it is
so, why our mood should be attuned to sorrow, gaiety, enthusiasm,
heroism, meditation, by the hearing of music in its various kinds. We do
not know, either, why the mere shapes of the sublime architecture of
some great abbey or cathedral, or the blended colours of its
deep-damasked window-stains, should fill our hearts with devout or
poignant aspirations. Yet we know that the fact is so. And it is the
same with poetry. The rhythm and melody which come spontaneously from
the poet's mood dispose the hearer in the self-same way; they fit him to
receive what the other brings. Verse, as we now understand that term,
poetry need not be. But though it may look like prose because the lines
stretch all across the page and cannot be measured by so many iambics or
anapaests, yet, if it be real poetry, heart-felt and heart-moving, it
will be but a delusive prose, a prose of infinitely subtle rhythms and
harmonies. It will be as far removed as the Homeric hexameter from the
pedestrian motion of cold argument.

Poetry will never fail us until nature fails. We may miss the
transcendent voices now, but we have had during this century more than a
century's usual share, and with the first widespread rise of some new
moral fervour or lofty hope and aim the great poet cannot be wanting to
give it shape in thrilling verse.

Poetry will never fail us. The poetry of nature will not fail us. So
long as the sun shall each night and morning glorify the heavens with