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A Study of Poetry by Bliss Perry
page 7 of 297 (02%)
planting bulbs, and transmute it into a symbol of the resurrection of the
dead; its capacity for turning fact into truth and brown earth into
beauty; for remoulding the broken syllables of human speech into sheer
music; for lifting the mind, bowed down by wearying thought and haunting
fear, into a brooding ecstasy wherein weeping is changed into laughter and
autumnal premonitions of death into assurance of life, and the narrow
paths of individual experience are widened into those illimitable spaces
where the imagination rules. Poetry does all this, assuredly. But how? And
why? That is our problem.

"The future of poetry is immense," declared Matthew Arnold, and there are
few lovers of literature who doubt his triumphant assertion. But the past
of poetry is immense also: impressive in its sheer bulk and in its
immemorial duration. At a period earlier than any recorded history, poetry
seems to have occupied the attention of men, and some of the finest
spirits in every race that has attained to civilization have devoted
themselves to its production, or at least given themselves freely to the
enjoyment of reciting and reading verse, and of meditating upon its
significance. A consciousness of this rich human background should
accompany each new endeavor to examine the facts about poetry and to
determine its essential nature. The facts are indeed somewhat complicated,
and the nature of poetry, in certain aspects of it, at least, will remain
as always a mystery. Yet in that very complication and touch of mystery
there is a fascination which has laid its spell upon countless generations
of men, and which has been deepened rather than destroyed by the advance
of science and the results of scholarship. The study of folklore and
comparative literature has helped to explain some of the secrets of
poetry; the psychological laboratory, the history of criticism, the
investigation of linguistics, the modern developments in music and the
other arts, have all contributed something to our intelligent enjoyment of
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