CHAPTER II

THE PROVINCE OF POETRY

"The more I read and re-read the works of the great poets,
and the more I study the writings of those who have some
Theory of Poetry to set forth, the more am I convinced that
the question _What is Poetry?_ can be properly answered only if
we make _What it does_ take precedence of _How it does it_."
J. A. STEWART, _The Myths of Plato_

In the previous chapter we have attempted a brief survey of some of the
general aesthetic questions which arise whenever we consider the form and
meaning of the fine arts. We must now try to look more narrowly at the
special field of poetry, asking ourselves how it comes into being, what
material it employs, and how it uses this material to secure those
specific effects which we all agree in calling "poetical," however widely
we may differ from one another in our analysis of the means by which the
effect is produced.

Let us begin with a truism. It is universally admitted that poetry, like
each of the fine arts, has a field of its own. To run a surveyor's
line accurately around the borders of this field, determining what belongs
to it rather than to the neighboring arts, is always difficult and
sometimes impossible. But the field itself is admittedly "there," in all
its richness and beauty, however bitterly the surveyors may quarrel about
the boundary lines. (It is well to remember that professional surveyors do