In poetry this accuracy, this rigour in unfolding the content as we find it in its simplicity, is not alone the essential principle. On the contrary, though prose is forced to confine its ideas on parallel lines of almost mathematical precision with the nature of its content, poetry introduces us to a different sphere altogether, that is, the visible appearance of the content itself, or other natural phenomena related to it. For it is just this objective reality which in poetry ought to appear, and while unquestionably from one point of view revealing that content, yet at the same time from another it has to liberate itself from the purely abstract content, it being essentially an object of the art to direct attention to its actual existence in the visible world, and to arouse the interest of mind in the forms of life itself.
(c) If these three essential requirements of poetry are conditioned by an age, in which the accuracy of the prosaic mind is become the ordinary type of conscious life, the art, so far as its figurative characteristics are concerned, is placed in a more difficult position. That is to say, in such an epoch the type of penetration exercised by conscious life is generally a separation of emotion and the ordinary outlook from scientific thought, which either converts the ideal and external material of feeling and perception into a stimulus of knowledge and volition simply, or into a plastic medium subservient to observation and action. In such a sphere poetry calls for energies of more definite purpose in order that it may free itself from the abstraction of the prevailing mental attitude and enter into the world of concrete life. Where, however, such a goal is realized, not only do we find that this breach between thinking, which makes for generalization, and perception and feeling, which grasp the particular, vanishes, but these last-mentioned modes of conscious life are, together with their subject-matter and content, at the same time freed from their exclusive relation of service; and the process culminates in a victorious reconciliation of such modes with what is essential universality. Inasmuch, however, as both the modes of poetic and prosaic thought and general outlook are united in one and the same conscious life, we find in it indications of trouble and derangement, even possibly an actual conflict between the two, one which, as the poetry of our times testifies, only genius of the highest order is able successfully to deal with. Added to this there are other collateral hindrances, which I only propose to define now, and that briefly, in their relation to the figurative aspect already discussed. In other words, if the prosaic intelligence takes the place of that creative imagination which previously obtained, then and in that case the rejuvenescence of the poetic faculty, both in all that is associated with the positive expression of facts and what is metaphorical, readily offers the semblance of artificiality, which even where it falls short of actual purpose, is only with great difficulty reconciled with that directness of immediate truth which is demanded. Much in fact which was still fresh in former times, through repeated usage, and the habits thus originated, has itself become gradually a custom and a part of prosaic life. Moreover, where poetry strives after novelties in its composition, we often find that, despite of itself, in its figurative expressions and descriptions, even where it escapes the charge of exaggeration and an excess of such material, it none the less leaves an impression of artificiality, over nicety, a straining after what is piquant and select, work incompatible with a simple and healthy outlook and state of feeling. Such work tends to regard objects in an artificial light and reckons on mere effect. Consequently it will not permit their natural lighting and colour. Defects of this nature are still more obvious in cases where, as a rule, the metaphorical type of imaginative composition is exchanged[4] for the more direct, and our poet is driven to outbid the forces of prose; and, in order to assert an originality, plunges into the subtleties of or the fishing for effects which have still some appearance of freshness.
2. VERBAL EXPRESSION
Inasmuch as the poetic imagination is distinct in its operation from that of all other artists in virtue of the fact that it necessarily clothes its images in words, and communicates the same through human speech, it becomes imperative that throughout this process it should endeavour to co-ordinate all its ideas, in the form which with most completeness will disclose them, through the means articulate speech thus places at its disposal. And, in short, we may affirm that the poetic content only assumes the form of poetry in its restricted sense after it has been actually embodied and rounded off in the vehicle of words.
This literary aspect of the art of poetry would readily supply us with a boundless field of discursive observation and logical argument, which I must, however, pass over in order that I may reserve space for more weighty problems which lie before us. I merely propose, therefore, to touch very briefly on a few fundamental points.
(a) Human art should in all its associations place us on a ground quite other than that we confront in ordinary life, or indeed in our religious consciousness, active life, or the speculations of philosophy. This is possible on the side of literary or verbal expression only in so far as another mode of speech is adopted than that obtaining in those other spheres. Art has therefore not only, from one point of view, to avoid that in its instrument of expression which will fail to rise above the trivialities of ordinary speech and ordinary prose, but it must, furthermore, avoid falling into the tone and manner of religious edification and philosophical research. Above all it must keep aloof from the precise analyses and methods of the scientific faculty, the categories of pure thinking as we find these illustrated in the logical forms of judgment and deduction. These at once remove art from the imaginative realm to another region altogether. But in all these respects it still remains a difficult matter to determine the lines of boundary on which we may actually affirm that poetry ends and prose begins. And in fact we may admit absolute precision and confidence of statement to be impossible from the nature of the case.
(b) If we pass now to a discussion of the particular means which poetic-speech can appropriate as instrumental to its task the following points appear to me pregnant and suggestive.
(α) First, we find particular words and exclamations[5] that are obviously peculiar to poetry, whether they be used to ennoble it, or to introduce the vulgarity and excess of comedy. We find a similar novelty in the specific collocation of various words or turns of expression. In such a field poetry is no doubt entitled on the one hand to borrow from an obsolete nomenclature, obsolete at least in everyday speech, and on the other to declare itself as pre-eminently an innovator, moulding novel modes of speech. Such a field, provided only the vital genius of the language is preserved, supplies material for astonishing boldness of invention.
(β) Secondly, we have the problem of verbal order. It is here that we meet with those so-called figures of speech, in so far as, we should add, the same have reference to verbal embodiment as such. The use of these, however, easily degenerates into rhetoric and declamation in the bad sense of these terms; the vitality of individual character is destroyed where we find that such forms substitute a fixed and artificial mode of expression for the genuine impulse of feeling or passion, and thereby offer the very opposite to the personal, laconic and broken utterance required, the utterance whose emotional depth is incapable of saying much, and for this reason, in romantic poetry especially, is of great effect as a presentment of suppressed[6] states of soul. But generally speaking we may admit that the relative order of words is an instrument of the external form of poetry of quite extraordinary resource.