Conclusion




WHAT IS POETRY?


If you were to ask twenty intelligent people, "What is the Thames?" the
answer due to you from each would be--"a river." And yet this would hardly
be matter to satisfy your enquiring mind. You would more probably say,
"What do you know of the Thames?" or, "Describe the Thames to me." This
would bring you a great variety of opinions, many dissertations on
geological and national history, many words in praise of beauty, many
personal confessions. Here would be the revelation of many minds
approaching a great subject in as many manners, confirming and
contradicting each other, making on the whole some impression of cumulative
judgment, giving you many clues to what might be called the truth, no one
of them by itself coming near to anything like full knowledge, and the
final word would inevitably be left unsaid.

The question, "What is poetry?" has been answered innumerable times, often
by the subtlest and clearest minds, and as many times has it been answered
differently. The answer in itself now makes a large and distinguished
literature to which, full as it is of keen intelligence and even of
constructive vision, we can return with unstaling pleasure. The very poets
themselves, it is true, lending their wits to the debate, have left the
answer incomplete, as it must--not in the least unhappily--always remain.
And yet, if we consider the matter for a moment, we find that all this
wisdom, prospering from Sidney's _Apology_ until to-day, does not