p,
A little folding
Of petals to the lull
Of quiet rainfalls,--
Here in my garden,
In angle sheltered
From north and east wind--
Softly shall recreate
The courage of charity,
Henceforth not to me only
Breathing the message.

Clean-breath'd Sirens!
Henceforth the mariner,
Here on the tideway
Dragging, foul of keel,
Long-strayed but fortunate,
Out of the fogs,
the vast Atlantic solitudes,
Shall, by the hawser-pin
Waiting the signal--
"Leave-go-anchor!"
Scent the familiar
Fragrance of home;
So in a long breath
Bless us unknowingly:
Bless them, the violets,
Bless me, the gardener,
Bless thee, the giver.

My business (I remind myself) behind the window is not to scribble
verses: my business, or a part of it, is to criticise poetry, which
involves reading poetry. But why should anyone read poetry in these
days?

Well, one answer is that nobody does.

I look around my shelves and, brushing this answer aside as flippant,
change the form of my question. Why do we read poetry? What do we
find that it does for us? We take to it (I presume) some natural
need, and it answers that need. But what is the need? And how does
poetry answer it?

Clearly it is not a need of knowledge, or of what we usually
understand by knowledge. We do not go to a poem as we go to a work
on Chemistry or Physics, to add to our knowledge of the world about
us. For example, Keats' glorious lines to the Nightingale--

"Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird . . ."

Are unchallengeable poetry; but they add nothing to our stock of
information. Indeed, as Mr. Bridges pointed out the other day, the
information they contain is mostly inaccurate or fanciful. Man is,
as a matter of fact, quite as immortal as a nightingale in every
sense but that of sameness. And as for:

"Magic casements opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn,"

Science tells us that no such things exist in this or any other
ascertained world. So, when Tennyson tells us that birds in the high
Hall garden were crying, "Maud, Maud, Maud," or that:

"There has fallen a splendid tear
From the passion-flower at the gate:
She is coming, my dove, my dear;
She is coming, my life, my fate;
The red rose cries, 'She is near, she is near';
And the white rose weeps,