lfil more perfectly the
functions of art--which are, as I have said, to communicate the spirit
of one human being to his fellows--so language also is ever struggling
to enlarge its powers and to do what musicians tell us music alone can
do. Language, too, must translate feeling, and moods, but into words. It
in a sense invades the region of music. And herein lies the
justification--the necessity--for poetry, or for a prose which is
virtually poetry in its language and movement and imagination. Poetry,
in that broad sense, must always be the literary form for the expression
of that which is most difficult to express, I mean of anything which is
pervaded by a rare exaltation and passion of feeling, or by a delicate
grace and charm.

* * * * *

Some people pretend to think that poetry is a wholly artificial thing;
that it is merely a pleasing trick, when it is not an irritating trick,
with language. Well, alas! it is quite natural that many stern spirits
should be irritated by verses; for it is entirely true that nine-tenths
of what is being, or has been, written in verse might better have been
written in prose, or rather not written at all. The young author, and,
for the matter of that, the old author, who thinks that he has a perfect
right to choose between the verse form and the prose form simply
according as he can versify or not, is grievously in the wrong. There is
no more justification for, say, a purely didactic poem or descriptive
poem than there is for the rhyming which begins somebody's treatise on
optics with these egregious words:--

When parallel rays
Come opposite ways
And fall upon opposite sides.

Everything depends upon the nature of that which a man has to say.

What are the external marks of poetry as distinct from real prose?
These: the choice of words of a special emotional or pictorial force,
combined with musical cadences, rhythm, and sometimes rhyme. And why are
these employed? To tickle the ear? By no means. It is simply because
they are most effective agents in that communication of his mood and
spirit which is the aim of the artist. When a mere fact has to be
stated, there is no defence for verse, unless as an aid to memory, just
as we say--

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November.

When a thing can be said just as well in prose, there is no excuse for
not putting it in prose. That axiom should kill off half our amateur
poets and