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RDITEI) WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND APPENDIX J ' V* Im BV W. J. ALEXANDER, Ph.D., Professor of Eui^Hs/i in University College, Toronto. s^.i .ft p».titi iiti TORONTO : THE COPP, CLARK COMPANY, LIMITED. 1896. i Entered according,' to Act of the Parliament of Canii^ia, in the year one thousand ei^ht hundred and ninety-six, by Thk Copp, Ct.Aiii; Company, Limitkd, Toronto, Ontario, in the Office of the Minister of Ajjriculture. ■.fl CONTENTS. PAQK. Introduction : I'oetry, its Thought and Form . • • • vii Ski.K(Tions : The Traveller GoUlHinith 1 The Deserted Vilhij^e 1 ( 14 Uj)<)n Westminster Bridge Wordsu'ortli 'J7 The (Jreen Linnet «( 21 The Cuckoo "She Wiis a Pliantoni of Delight" II 30 Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland It .'U The Inner Vision ...... II M Rosahelle ...... Scott . 'Mi The Outlaw << lio The Hover ... . . . . i( 37 Jock of Hazeldean. .... i< 37 Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto iv . Bi/roii ,31) Ozymandias of Egypt .... . site lie y 93 To a Skylark (( 03 The Recollection ..... << 97 On F^irst Looking into Chapnian'-s Homer Kf'dt/i 101 The Tei ror of Death .... i« 101 Ode to a Nightingale .... < t 102 Ode to Autumn ..... << 104 The Human Seasons .... (( 106 NoTE.s on (ioldsmith, Life, etc 109 The Traveller .... 120 The Deserted Village . UO " Wordsworth, Life, etc. ir)(5 " Upon Westminster Bridge . 167 The Green Linnet 168 To the Cuckoo .... 170 " " She was a Phantom of Delight " . 172 '• Thought of a Briton on the Suhjugatioi 1 of Switzerlanc I 173 " The Inner Vision . . . 173 [V] |B2SS>- VI CONTENTS. i s Notes op. Scott, Life, etc. Rosabelle . '* The Outlaw . The Rover . " Jock of llazeldean " Byron, Life, etc. . " Childe Harold, Canto i " Shelley, Life, etc. " Ozyniandias of Egypt To a Skylark " The Recollection . " Keats, Life, etc. . " On First Looking into Chapman's The Terror of Death " Ode to a Nightingale " Ode to Autumn . " The Human Seasons Appendix: Selections for "Sight" lleadin An Old Ballad The Sun upon the Weirdlaw From the " ICpisfcle to Erskin To Althea from Prison . Fron\ the ' ' Essay on M an ' ' Ode on a Distant Prospect ot \\Un\ College . , Ode to Duty . To the Skylark Song from ' ' James Lee " The Lost Leader . Shelley . . . . From " Parting" . Absence . . . . • A Christmas Carol. Sonnet xxix . Sonnet civ . After-thought To Night Sonnet .... The Choice Immortality . " lie Hill f ]<:t PAOF. • • 174 • • 187 • 190 • • 191 » • 192 • • 194 • • 207 • • 238 • • 244 • • 245 • • 247 • • 250 mer 259 • 260 • • 260 • • 263 • • 264 • • 267 Scott . . 268 i( . 2G9 Lovelace . 273 Pope . . 274 (Iray . . 276 Wordsxvo rth. . 279 i( . 280 Boheit Jii 'ownitKj . 281 (( (( 281 A. J. Strimjer . 282 Matthew Arnold . 283 (( <( . 284 Lowell . . 284 S/nikiNpeare. . 285 t( • . 286 \Vor(Uioorth. . 286 Blanco White . 287 Alfred A unthi . 287 D. G. liossetti . 288 Alattheiv Arnold . 288 f PAOF. 174 187 190 191 192 194 207 238 244 245 247 250 259 260 260 263 204 267 268 269 273 274 276 279 280 281 281 282 283 284 284 •285 286 286 287 287 288 288 IXTRODIT^TFOX. T. Pocfri/: lff< ThoUfjJit and Ffyriii. The Function of Poetry.— Language and literature are tlie outcome of the desire to communicate thought. Certain assertions, judgments, propositions arise in the mind, and by means of speech or writing we make them known to others. We, for example, accompany a stranger through our own provirje or county, and by the language of ordinary conversation convey information with regard to its fer- tility, population, etc. But when the heart swells with pride in our native land, or with the countless emotional associations that link themselves to our native place, or with enthusiasm for the natural beauty of the scene before us, we should feel that these statements, conveyed in ordinary language, do not fully express M'hat is in us. We should wish to express not merely facts — intellectual propositions, — but to give vent to these varied emotions ; and for this ordinary language will not suffice. On such an occasion the average man, as his heart burns within him, feels a sense of repression, the need of a form of utterance not at his command ; but if, happily, he recalls some suitable passage in poetry, he, in some measure, iinds an outlet for his emotion. Much more could he satisfy the yearning for utterance, were he himself a poet, and had he the power to shai)e the language of poetry to his present needs. This, then, is the function of poetry, to communicate thought accompamed by emotion, to give vent to /fcliiiij. Poetry is not a mere exhibition of dexterity, like walking the tight-rope, or a superfluous intellectual ornament, like the useless bric-a-brac of a drawing-room j it is something essential to the full expreaaion of the [vii] Vlll INTRODUCTION. S i\ developeil human spirit. That it docs "fill a felt need "is shown by the fact that it has arisen independently and spontaneously among every people that has emerged from barbarism. The man who has never felt the need of poetic expression, or found pleasure in poetic literature, may, indeed, be an estimable citizen, a man of great powers — even of genius ; but his nature is limited or stunted, and that, too, in one of its noblest capacities ; such a man cannot be accepted as a type of human perfection. Some men possess in the highest degi'ee the emotional im- pulse, and have, in addition, the command of language needful to convey it to others ; these are the poets. With the ordinary man the need for poetic expression arises, as indicated in the example above, principally in connection with personal feeling. It is a matter of common experi- ence that persons under the influence of youthful passion attempt to express their feelings in poetry, who write verse at no other period of life. But with poets, especially with great poets, the need arises also from the impersonal delight in beauty for its own sake, especially from the desire to create new objects of beauty in the world of imagination. Its Aim and Form. — Poetry, then, differs from prose in its aim and in its for))i. The aim of ])rose is to convey thought, — those mental condi- tions which may be expressed in propositions ; prose may also communi- cate feeling, but it is not an essential of good prose to appeal to the emotions. 'J'he aim of poetry, on the other haml, is to convey more complex and vague ■ states of mind, — thought permeated with emotion. In form, poetry is easily distinguishable from prose. Poetry clothes itself in verse ; its language is metrical, marked by the regular recur- rence of stresses, sounds, pauses, which gives the sense of rhythm to the ear. As we read, we anticipate these recurrences ; and, if they are absent, have an unpleasing sensation. In prose, these sound factors are irregular ; the reader has no anticipations with regard to them ; the writer has the fullest liberty in the adjustment of his stresses and pauses. Now, there is, unquestionably, a close connection between this peculiarity of form in poetry, and the peculiarity of its aim. Rhythm in general assists the prodiictiou of pleasurable feeling ; and certain varieties of rhythm, as is shown both in music and in poetry, are coudu< POETIC FORM AND THOUGHT. IX civ J to certain modes of feeling. Every one perceives that the diflFer- ences in the sound-effect of a stanza of Gray's Efecjij, and of the song in Tennyson's Brook, correspond in some measure to the differences between the subjects treated, and the moods of the poets. This adapta- bility of sound to sense goes much farther than most readers consciously recognize, although they may /eeHhe effect, — although the form may impart the desired stimulus to their emotional temper. Poetical cul- ture gieatly increases our susceptibility to these effects. Further, the emotional iutiuence is exercised, not merely by the subject itself, and througli ilie rhythiii of the verse, but is conveyed by the character of the inui>^'cry, the sort of words employed and the associations connected with thoni, and by those other numberless minutiae which go to make up what we call tlie style of a poem. In reading a purely scientific work — a treatise on chemistry or mathe- matics, for example, — all that we need to regard is the thought. The substance is everything; the expression may, as far as the reader is con- cerned, be disregarded. The style should be clear, direct, — in short, such as to attract the least possible attention to itself. But in poetry, expres- sion is of the highest importance ; he who simply follows the drift of thought, the substantial meaning, — has gone but a little way towards appreciating a poem, or catching that which it is intended to convey. The reader must, in addition, be very sensitive to the style ; and that, not merely so as intellectually to perceive stylistic peculiarities, but so as to feel the effect of them. Just as in nmsic, it would not suffice that a person shoulil be able to observe and define the relation of each note to the other, to state how many vibrations per second went to the for- mation of each ; he must e.ujoy the harmony and melody which their combination produces. Its Theme. — A poem, then, is addressed to the feelings and to the sense of beauty, as well as, and even more than, to the understanding. 1'he proper theme of a poem will therefore be something which has in itself some intrinsic emotional effect :— a touching story or situation in human life, as in lioaahellt or The Outlaw ; a beautiful external object or scene. 1 i i i i I X INTRODUCTION. as in Byroii'H stanzas ou the Falls of Terni ; a feeling, or emotional mood, as in the 0 u but he does not give us a disquisition upon tliese points — a series of general statements about Jews or ambitious people. He embodies his ideas in the typical cases of Shylock and Macbeth. By adopting this method, he gains the advantage of touching our feelings, of bringing home the truth of his embodiment to our hearts in a degree to which he could never have attained by any reasoned systematic treatise. A pf)et's attention is fixed upon the individual ; and he represents individual things or persons in his poetry, not indeed just as he has observed them, but so as to embody some conception or feeling existing in his own mind. When he beholds a beautiful landscape, he is not chiefly impelled to ask how it came into existence, what geologic forces shaped its outlines, what peculiarities of soil or situ- ation account for the trees which bedeck it. Such questions are the outcome of the scientifiG tendency. Upon the artistic mind the chief efifect of the landscape is to produce some emotional impres- sion, — of grandeur, repose, beauty, etc. And this is what the artist seeks to reproduce in a picture or a poem. It is impossible, even were it desirable, to convey the infinite details that belong to the actual scene. The artist selects those which serve to convey the impression the scene makes upon him ; he excludes all incongruities — and in every actual scene there will be such ; he intensifies what makes for his purpose ; and with the same view, probably introduces what does not exist in the original. In short, he idealizes. He originates a new concrete which typifies some general conception, and conveys some emotion to the spectator or reader. Beauty and Perfection of Poetry in Details. —As the whole which the poet creates is concrete, and beautiful, and fitted to jjroduce a given emotional effect upon the reader ; so, in the best poetry, will each part of that whole, as far as possible, in itself give a concrete image, and a sense of beauty and pleasure. This independence and interest of the parts is not required in prose ; any part, there, is amply justified if it contributes to the whole outcome. But the ^est poetry not only charms as a whole ; but, further, its parts are such that we linger over them with POETIC FORM AND THOUGHT. xiil dt'light. We do not hurry through them, as wo hurry through some novels with well-constructed story, but otherwise barren, — eager only to catch enough as we go, to carry us to the end. Of course, every poem does not attain perfection ; and many beautiful poems have