The Worlds Best Poetry, Volume 8

The World's Best Poetry, Volume
8

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Carman This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and
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Title: The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8
Author: Various Edited by Bliss Carman
Release Date: July 17, 2004 [EBook #12924]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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_THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY_
_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_
THE WORLD'S BEST POETRY
IN TEN VOLUMES, ILLUSTRATED

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 Poetry Vol. VIII NATIONAL SPIRIT_

THE STUDY OF POETRY.
BY FRANCIS HOVEY STODDARD.
Clever men of action, according to Bacon, despise studies, ignorant
men 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
them and above them won by observation." These are the words of a
man who had been taught by years of studiousness the emptiness of
mere study. It does not teach its own usefulness, and gives its most
important lesson if through it we learn that beyond lies a region from
which may come a truer wisdom won by observation. This, when all is
said, is the one great defect of any system of study, in that it teaches not
its own use. No amount of study of the principles of barter will make a
man a great merchant. One can study painting and learn all the
characteristics and methods and schools of the art and yet not be able to
paint a picture. No amount of study of poetry will make a man a poet.
So the crafty men of action "contemn studies," and the wise men who
use them look beyond them for their value. "English literature," said a
noted professor not long ago, "cannot be taught"; and certain it is that
even with the most advanced analytical text-book one cannot get a final
satisfaction from "doing a sum" in English literature as one would work
a problem in arithmetic. When applied to the higher arts, study, deep
and true as one can make it, leaves one the surer that there is a wisdom
beyond, which cometh not by study alone.
Least of all can the deepest things in poetry be learned by mere study.
Poetry deals with feeling, which study excludes. Study, indeed, seems
to belong exclusively to the prose habit; it seems to be of the intellect
and not of the emotions; to be of the mind and not of the spirit. We
cannot write a text-book in poetry, nor can we ever in a text-book
written in prose put all the secret of poetry. Beyond the text-book
always lies the higher wisdom born of that which Bacon called

observation, which most of us now call insight, that immediate
apprehension of the highest relations which comes as a revelation in
our 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 most effectively.
Poetry is one of the most difficult of all arts to study, so difficult that it
has had few text-books and no complete exposition. The inquirer
searching for help will find only a few hand-books, the most useful of
which are these: Gummere: "Beginnings of Poetry" and "Hand-book of
Poetry"; Schipper: "Metrik"; Lanier: "Science of English Verse"; Guest:
"English Rhythms"; Stedman: "The Nature and Elements of Poetry."
Excellent as these are, he may lament when he has read them that he
has found the history of poetic forms, and the technique of poetic
method, where he hoped to find the secret of poetry. He will be likely
to get as much help from writings on poetry that are not text-books,
such as Matthew Arnold's Essays: "On Translating Homer," "Last
Words on Translating Homer," "Celtic Poetry," "Introduction to the
Poetry of Wordsworth," and the "Introduction to Humphry Ward's
English Poets"; Emerson's Essays: "The Poet" and "Poetry and
Imagination"; Wordsworth's Introduction to the "Lyrical Ballads";
Poe's striking little essays on the art of poetry; Aristotle's "Rhetoric";
Macaulay's "Essay on Milton"; Lowell's "Essay on Dryden"; and many
a passage of illuminative comment from Milton,