"
Then let him make his own list for study, taking those poems which
have most stirred him, those which he remembers vividly after his
reading, those which have become a part of himself. If the student
makes his choice frankly and sincerely, he has, in making it, begun
his study. Then let him frame for himself or get from his leader, if
he has one, a list of the questions which each poem is to answer for
him. If the work be really poetry, its study ought to give a help
toward the solution of the first great problems: "What is poetry?" and
"What is its revelation to the life of our senses, our hearts, and our
souls?" We have a right to ask of each poem three questions: "How does
it charm our senses?"; "How does it make the meaning of things clearer
for us?"; "How does it bring to us a renewal of life?" The first
question is better fitted for private study than for class
investigation, the senses being delicate organs and shy in company.
Let the minute matters of form and structure be gone over at home. Let
the student work out the metre, the typical line, and the variations
by which the poet gets his effects, the metaphors, the alliterations,
the consonant and vowel harmonies. It will aid if this work be made as
definite and as exact as an investigation in a scientific laboratory.
But all this should be the student's home work. In the class the large
divisions of the poem should be sympathetically shown, so that each
student will comprehend the poem as a whole as the poet must have
conceived it.
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