The Literature of Ecstasy

at the diction of metrical poetry should differ in no wise from that of prose. Yet the only writers who use the natural diction of men are novelists, pro

uirements of using in their compositions the natural conversation of men under the influence of natural feeli

way with mythological references, with tales about legendary characters. He wrote about the emo

use of such language in verse poetry to be ridiculous, as it was in prose. He was not an exponent of prose poetry, even though he laid little stress on the importance of metre. As the authors of the article on Wordsworth in the Encyclopedia Britannica state, the farthest he went in defense of prose structure in poetry was to say that if the words in verse happene

vacity and susceptibility both of the general feelings and the attention" by the continued excitement of surprise. I submit that metre often distracts the attention from the poem's real object, which is to depict ecstasy. Metre often diverts our ear to the singsong tone in which the emotions are couched. Instead of adding to the vivacity and susceptibility of the feelings it really makes us suspect that the poet is not sincere, for the man of emotions expresses them spontaneously and does not trick them out in pattern. Next, Coleridge assumes that because of custom, metre must have some property in common with poetry. This argument cannot stand when we take into consideration the innumerable emotional passages that have been written in prose. A custom is only a passing practice, and free verse writers h

trivial a thing; only it may be proper to intimate that these are observed with great exactness, whilst the accents of sentences are ne

he first attack i

rated that an entire volume might be written in rhythmical prose (with the lines broken up), and that the product could be the highest poetry. His Leaves

., and that even if rhyme and those measurements continue to furnish the medium for inferior writers and themes (especially for persiflage and the comic, as there seems henceforward, to the perfect taste, something inevitably comic in rhyme, merely in itself, and anyh

f poetry into Epic, Dramatic and Lyric, and critics have exhausted thems

form. The dramatic poem was another way of telling a story without introducing much narration or description. Poetry does not inhere in an epic of Homer or a pla

llad and other forms. These divisions have perverted our knowledge as to the nature of poetry. Any one can make a similar classification of the poetry in prose,

erature protested long before Croce agai

rose is always poetry when it is sensitized. Nietzsche, himself a great poet, also saw this. "Let it be observed," said Nietzsche, "that the great masters of prose have almost always been poets as well, whether openly, or only in secret and for the

side." "There exists poetry without prose, but not prose without poetry." Poetical material permeates the souls of all; any expression of it in verse or prose, in painting or music, is poetry. Since all poetry is expression and all ex

a. Similarly the speeches in epic poems are lyrics. The poetry of Homer or Shakespeare is not epic or dramatic, for poetry is just an emotional outburst. Andromache's speeches and Hamlet's soliloquies could have appeared alone and they would have been considered lyrics; they remain lyrics even in the body of

presented on the stage to move people, and based on rules that relate to economy of words, concentration of facts and strikingness of action, is a performance that has a technique of its own; the dramatist is a poet only

suicides, murders. All great novels have dramatic scenes and they are often as exuberant in poetry as are similar scenes in plays. We no longer regard as tragedies only those plays in verse where a virtuous person of high degree is in a frightful predicament because of unjust and unlooked-for defeat with fate. No, in spite of Aristotle, the suffering of even a wicked person of low station, depicted as due to his own fault as of

gedy was the highest form of poetry. This is not so. If Shakespeare and Sophocles lived in our day they might have written novels or essay

er him. Ruskin and Dickens were great poets, but when we say that their metrical compositions were not great poetry we merely mean that they were not adept in choosing rhymes and complying with metrical rules. To do this requires a distinc

n verse in the Portuguese sonnets which are nothing more than some of the letters put into metre and rhyme; there are some who t

ing letter

cal landing place . . . in order to be quite well to-morrow. Oh-we are so selfish on this earth, that nothing grieves us very long, let it be ever so grievous, unless we are touched in ourselves . . . in the apple of our eye . . . in the quick of our heart . . . in what you are and where you are . . . my own dearest beloved! So you need not be afraid for me. We all look to our own, as I to you; the thunderbolts may strike the tops

ophy and history. Plato had the good sense to write in prose instead of following the ridi

n's Pharsalia. The last two works were especially admired in the medieval ages when rhymed or metrical historical chronicles were the fashion, and they were favorites of Dante. Very few people to-day read these metrical histories. English literature also is full of

in his Art of Poetry, have been fruitful of mischief. Even much of the lengthy works of Shelley, Byron and Browning would have been better had they been written in prose, and they would h

any other nation. The reason may be that they have not been prolific of good poetry in verse,

he excluded a consideration of versification. He thought the perfection of French verse impossible, that versification loses more than it gains by rhyme, and that French poets were cramped by versification. He wanted superfluous ornaments removed and the necessary parts turned into natural ornaments. Still he did not insist on a complete abandonment of rhyme, but wanted greater freedom. His biographer, St. Cyr, says that Fénelon wanted to abolish verse altogether in French poetry. Fénelon also wrote a novel in prose poetry in 1699, Télé

prose poems as well as with verse poems. Victor Hugo in his Shakespeare, when he calls the lists of poets, mentions prose writers like Diderot,

l emotions are at work here. He states that there was poetry in the story of Don Juan before Corneille put it in verse. Versification, he urges, does not constitute poetry. He sees that verse would not have improved such prose poems as Paul and Virginia, La Mare au Diable, or L'Oiseau (Michelet), and he

poetry written by other nations,

ssioned prose is looked upon as the father of it, though there was prose poetry in English literature from the earlies

liot, that poetry is impassioned truth, and by another definition from Blackwood's, that poetry is "man's thought tinged by his feelings," he says, "Every truth which a human being can enunciate, every thought, even every outward impression, which can enter into his consciousness, may become poetry when shown through any impassioned medium, when invested with the colo

a minor r?le to the emotions excited by the incidents in prose fiction, though it is true that the emotions of excitement wakened by the mere novel o

poetry in that novel. He did not always succeed, but throughout all his novels are found many excellent prose poems. He was writing prose poetry in the early e

have returned to the s

th two chapters on prose poets, on Carlyle and Newman. And Courthope, worshipper of metre that he is, concludes his History of English Poetry with a chapter on

le he said "Prose will exert in due measure all the varied charms of poetry down to the r

etry. Both of Masson's essays are to be found in his Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats and Other Essays. Masson very ingeniously asks why we are not allowed to write prose in the manner that Milton writes in verse, or in the manner of ?schylus in prose translation. He concludes that poetry and prose are not two entirely separate spheres, but intersecting and penetrating. To-day we go even farther than Masson and urge that prose, except in short lyrics when verse may be used, should be

done in the past, and that the best verse should not disdain a certain resemblance to prose, is being

ius. On the contrary, it is found as well in the golden ages of literature, as, for example, in Sidney's Arcadia, which he himself quotes from, in Plato, in Pascal, in Dante's prose. It is strange that this view of Earle's should still largely prevail. Poetry an

ental emotions, commonplace ideas, and the merely popular. When we read in eloquent prose, the grand eulogies on the flag, on the purity and redeeming virtues of mother-love, on the dignity of toil, on the glory

ial and opportune art of the modern world, and it can e

orld allows, by prescription, to verse. Why may not prose chase forest-nymphs and see little green-eyed elves, and delight in peonies and musk-roses, and invoke the stars, and roll mists about the hills, and watch the sea thundering through caverns and dashing against the

ppear in its prose, but in its poetry, i. e., in verse. The greatness of English genius is in its poetry, but in the poe

many and France in the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries. In an age like the romantic, when the right to live and express emotions was pleaded, poetic prose, seeking restraint from metre, was especially appropriate. George Brandes has studied this movement in his Main Currents.

y have been surpassed by any of our metrical verse writers. One of the finest poems in American literature is undoubtedly Hawthorne's reflections of his lonely life in the Ivory To

I shall mention only one, the address to the po

e passage is

e, and sometimes wondering why it did not know me sooner, or whether it would ever know me at all,-at least, till I were in my grave. And sometimes it seemed as if I were already in the grave, with only life enough to be chilled and benumbed. But oftener I was happy,-at least, as happy as I then knew how to be, or was aware of the possibility of being. By and by, the world found me out in my lonely chamber, and called me forth,-not, indeed, with a loud roar of acclamation, but rather with a still, small voice,-and forth I went, but found nothing in the world that I thought preferable to my old solitude till now. . . . And now I begin to understand why I was imprisoned so many years in this lonely chamber, and why I could never break through the viewl

poem in prose is

e great and resounding actions also. Thou shalt lie close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or the Exchange. The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able to rehearse the names of thy friends in thy verse, for an old shame before the holy ideal. And this is the reward; that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome to thy invulnerab

TNO

in Prose (1890), and the sympathetic

on. Poetry in Prose, Three Essays by T. S.