He may first find it in some
pure lyric such as Shelley's "Skylark," or in some mystical fantasy
such as Moore's "Lallah Rookh" or Coleridge's "Christabel," or in some
story of human abnegation such as Tennyson's "Enoch Arden," or some
wail of a soul in pain, as in Shelley's "Adonais," or in some outburst
of exultant grief such as Whitman's "Captain, My Captain," or in some
revelation of the unseen potencies close about us, as in Browning's
"Saul," or in some vision of the mystery of this our earthly struggle
such as "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," or in some answer of
the spirit to a never stilled question such as Wordsworth's "Ode:
Intimations of Immortality." When he thus finds it he has come to
poetry in its highest use. In his "Alexander's Feast" Dryden hints at
two great functions of poetry in the lines:
"He raised a mortal to the skies,
She drew an angel down."
The office of poetry is to parallel the actual with the ideal, to cast
upon an earthly landscape something of a heavenly glow, to interpret
earthly things in terms of the spirit. The poetry of the Senses lifts
a mortal to the skies, thinking the thought of one higher than itself
as the poet muses, singing the songs of an angelic choir in harmony
with the rhythm of the verse. The poetry of the Spirit brings the
message of the angels down to men and makes the harmonies they speak
the music of this earthly life.
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