Then as some one reads aloud the lines the music of the
rhythms will come by assimilation rather than by analysis. Poetry
parallels the real with the ideal to make a harmony before undreamed
of. So in the lines sound re-echoes sound, and a subtle music but half
perceived sings itself out of the moving notes.
What burden this music bears is the second question. Poetry differs
from prose in that it lifts the thought so that its highest relations
and suggestions are made known. We have a right therefore to parallel
the prose sight with the poetic visions and to find in what the one
transcends the other. If we are studying the "Idylls of the King," for
instance, we may fitly ask what was the story as the poet took it, and
into what has he transformed it for us. This study of the thought of
the poem is an excellent subject for class work. The questions should
be made definite and so grouped that sections of the class can choose
one or another phase of the problem; the conferences should be so
directed that a few clearly worked-out and thoroughly unified poetic
thoughts will be left in the mind of each student.
In all things practice may fitly supplement precept. In a reading
circle of which one of the editors of this series was a member the
poems of Tennyson were studied by a method closely resembling that
advocated in this article. As a suggestion the topics and questions
for one of the poems are here given.
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