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,
from Pope, from Dryden, from Coleridge and from many another. For one
who has not known and read much poetry the best introduction to its
study may well be the pleasurable reading of some, or of all, of these
works, though remembering that such reading is not study, but only the
reviewing of records of work done by others, useful mainly as a
preparation for the real study which is to follow.

From all these works the student will not be likely to get a
definition of poetry which will satisfy him. One may say indeed with
truth that poetry is such expression as parallels the real and the
ideal by means of some rhythmic form. But this is not a complete
definition. Poetry is not to be bounded with a measuring line or
sounded with a plummet. The student must feel after its limits as
these authors have done, and find for himself its satisfactions. One
can feel more of its power than the mind can define; for definitions
are prose-forms of mind action, while poetry in its higher
manifestations is pure emotion, outpassing prose limits. Yet one can
know poetry if he cannot completely define it. The one essential
element which distinguishes it from prose is rhythm. In its primal
expressions this is mainly a rhythm of stresses and sounds--of accents
and measures, of alliterations and rhymes. Poetry began when man,