I hope our study has helped us to distinguish the higher from the lower forms of ecstasy, to find poetry in prose, and to differentiate poetry from verse, wherein there is no ecstasy but various conventions, like inversion, poetic diction, rhyme, metre, figures of speech, parallelisms, technique, and all forms of rhythm and repeats. That much of the best of the world's poetry has made abundant use of these mechanisms has led the critics to confuse poetry with its conventions. But the ecstasy was forgotten, and the emotional and intellectual value of the poem was overlooked. It was thought because the masters subscribed slavishly to the conventions that they

became poets because of them, whereas they were poets first and last because of the ecstasy, sometimes with the aid of the conventions and sometimes despite them. That these mechanisms will always be used in some degree is certain, but the most natural poetry will be that which uses them moderately, irregularly and only when the emotions and the ideas naturally clothe themselves in them.

Poetry and prose then are not contradictory, but prose becomes poetry when the element of ecstasy is present. We use the word prosaic in a sense, it is true, which means destitute of imagination or emotion; we even call verse of this kind prosaic. But a work in prose may be poetical, and one in verse be prosaic, and science, philosophy and morality become poetry, though in the form of prose, when bathed in the spirit of ecstasy. And the highest form of poetry is that wherein the ecstasy springs from our nature's most human and most admirable side.

After having learned that poetry is more natural without metre or a pattern, that it may be in prose with or without rhythm, that it may have a social message, that it is the product of the unconscious, that it is related to dreams in being an imaginary fulfilled wish of the poet, that it acts as a relief to the writer and the reader, that it is always personal and lyric, that it is synonymous with expression in the poet's mind, that its chief characteristic is passion, imagination or ecstasy, that its qualities are often enhanced rather than destroyed by the presence of intellect or morality, that it is an emotional spirit holding literature in suffusion instead of being a branch of literature, we shall find that most of the old definitions of poetry exclude a great deal of the world's best poetry, and include much that is not poetry.

INDEX OF AUTHORS