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I Home: Friendship
II Love
III Sorrow and Consolation
IV The Higher Life
V Nature
VI Fancy: Sentiment
VII Descriptive: Narrative
VIII National Spirit
IX Tragedy: Humor
X Poetical Quotations
Editor-in-Chief
BLISS CARMAN
Associate Editors
John Vance Cheney
Charles G.D. Roberts
Charles F. Richardson
Francis H. Stoddard
Managing Editor
John R. Howard
1904.
The World's Best PoetryVol. VIIINATIONAL SPIRIT
Clever men of action, according to Bacon, despise studies, ignorantmen too much admire them, wise men make use of them. "Yet," he says,"they teach not their own use, but that there is a wisdom without themand above them won by observation." These are the words of a man whohad been taught by years of studiousness the emptiness of mere study.It does not teach its own usefulness, and gives its most importantlesson if through it we learn that beyond lies a region from which maycome a truer wisdom won by observation. This, when all is said, is theone great defect of any system of study, in that it teaches not itsown use. No amount of study of the principles of barter will make aman a great merchant. One can study painting and learn all thecharacteristics and methods and schools of the art and yet not be ableto paint a picture. No amount of study of poetry will make a man apoet. So the crafty men of action "contemn studies," and the wise menwho use them look beyond them for their value. "English literature,"said a noted professor not long ago, "cannot be taught"; and certainit is that even with the most advanced analytical text-book one cannotget a final satisfaction from "doing a sum" in English literature asone would work a problem in arithmetic. When applied to the higherarts, study, deep and true as one can make it, leaves one the surerthat there is a wisdom beyond, which cometh not by study alone.
Least of all can the deepest things in poetry be learned by merestudy. Poetry deals with feeling, which study excludes. Study, indeed,seems to belong exclusively to the prose habit; it seems to be of theintellect and not of the emotions; to be of the mind and not of thespirit. We cannot write a text-book in poetry, nor can we ever in atext-book written in prose put all the secret of poetry. Beyond thetext-book always lies the higher wisdom born of that which Baconcalled observation, which most of us now call insight, that immediateapprehension of the highest relations which comes as a revelation inour inspired moments.
In spite of all this the study of poetry has an important function,and it is the purpose of this article to show how to use it mosteffectively. Poetry is one of the most difficult of all arts to study,so difficult that it has had few text-books and no completeexposition. The inquirer searching for help will find only a fewhand-books, the most useful of which are these: Gummere: "Beginningsof Poetry" and "Hand-book of Poetry"; Schipper: "Metrik"; Lanier:"Science of English Verse"; Guest: "English Rhythms"; Stedman: "TheNa