CONCLUSION


To summarise our argument, we find that poetry is the result of the
intensest emotional activity attainable by man focusing itself upon some
manifestation of life, and experiencing that manifestation completely; that
the emotion of poetry expresses itself in rhythm and that the significance
of the subject-matter is realised by the intellectual choice of the perfect
word. We recognise in the finished art, which is the result of these
conditions, the best words in the best order--poetry; and to put this
essential poetry into different classes is impossible. But since it is most
commonly found by itself in short poems which we call lyric, we may say
that the characteristic of the lyric is that it is the product of the pure
poetic energy unassociated with other energies, and that lyric and poetry
are synonymous terms.