And Meredith was not one to do less than justice to the superb Dream of imaginative youth.
[II]
THE EXPRESSION OF POETRY
The field of vision which first will occupy our attention, but the boundless expanse of which we can only traverse with a few general observations, is that which concerns the poetic generally, the content no less than the mode of conception and organic association adapted to the poetic work of art. This background will help to emphasize the second aspect of our subject, which is poetic expression more strictly, the idea in the ideal objectivity of the word appropriated by it as symbol of the image, and the melodious vehicle of its speech.
We may infer the nature of the relation between poetic expression generally and the mode of presentment proper to the other arts from our previous examination of the characteristics of the poetic art. Language and the sounds of words are neither a symbol of spiritual conceptions, nor an adequate mode of projecting ideality under the condition of spatial objectivity in the sense applicable to the corporeal forms of sculpture and painting, nor yet an intonation in musical sound of the entire soul. They are an abstract sign simply. As the vehicle of the poetic image or conception, however, it is necessary that this side also, in theory no less than deliberate elaboration, appear as distinct from the kind of expression appropriate to prose.
We may for this purpose emphasize with more detail three main points of distinction.
Our first point is this, that although poetic expression is throughout exclusively embodied in articulate words, and apparently as such is simply related to human speech, yet in so far as the words themselves are merely abstract signs representative of ideas, the true source of poetic speech is not to be discovered in the selection of particular words, and in the manner they are associated in sentences and elaborated phrases, nor in harmonious rhythm, rhyme and so forth, but in the type of conception employed. We have, in short, to look for our point of departure for the constructive use of expression in the choice of the idea or image, find our first and foremost question will be what kind of conception will give us an expression suitable to poetry. Secondly, however, it remains the fact that the imaginative idea essentially pertinent to poetry is exclusively made objective in language. We have consequently to investigate the expression of speech according to its purely verbal aspect, in the light of which poetic words are distinguishable from those of prose, poetic phrases from those of our ordinary life and prosaic thought, abstracting in the first instance the mere sound of them to our sense of hearing.
Finally, we have to recognize the fact that poetry is a mode of articulate speech, the sounding word, which in its temporal duration no less than its actual sound, must receive a definite configuration, one that implies the presence of time-measure, rhythm, melodious sound and rhyme.