Poetry is essentially a synthetic art; it unites the wandering desires
of our hearts and spirits to make one single and enduring impression.
Poetry speaks also the mood, the aspiration, and the deepest intent of
its author; so that the great poet is the one who brings us most
directly to understand its art. For most student classes it is best to
take a single poet for interpretation, and to study in succession a
small number--say six to ten--of his works, making one, or at least
two or three, the subject of the conferences for each week. The choice
of author will be dependent on many considerations and cannot here be
positively advised, but one will not go astray in choosing Wordsworth,
Tennyson, Browning, Longfellow, or Whittier, or three of them, for a
season's work. Intelligent direction is of great assistance in making
the study definite and progressive. Choose first of all the poems
which seem to have influenced men, for to move men is the final test
of poetry. If there is no class, and no leader, let the student make
his choice by a preliminary examination. Let him read rapidly, and for
the single impression, the poems of Wordsworth whose titles seem most
familiar to him as he scans them over; such as "Tintern Abbey,"
"Yarrow Unvisited," "Solitary Reaper," "Lucy," "We are Seven," "The
Intimations of Immortality," "She was a Phantom of Delight," and a few
of the lyrical ballads; then let him read Tennyson's "Locksley Hall,"
"Maud," "The Idylls of the King," and a few of the shorter poems; let
him read Browning's "Saul," "Abt Vogler," "The Grammarian's Funeral,"
"Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," "Pippa Passes," one or two
dramas, and a few of the brief poems in the volume "Men and Women."
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