Nowadays we are none of us likely to owe our lives to Poetry in this sense, yet in another we many of us owe to it a similar debt. How often, when worn with overwork, sorrow, or anxiety, have we taken down Homer or Horace, Shakespeare or Milton, and felt the clouds gradually roll away, the jar of nerves subside, the consciousness of power replace physical exhaustion, and the darkness of despondency brighten once more into the light of life.
"And yet Plato," says Jowett, "expels the poets from his Republic because they are allied to sense; because they stimulate the emotions; because they are thrice removed from the ideal truth."
In that respect, as in some others, few would accept Plato's Republic as being an ideal Commonwealth, and most would agree with Sir Philip Sidney that "if you cannot bear the planet-like music of poetry … I must send you in the behalf of all poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favor for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from the earth, for want of an epitaph."
Poetry has often been compared with painting and sculpture. Simonides long ago said that Poetry is a speaking picture, and painting is mute Poetry.
"Poetry," says Cousin, "is the first of the Arts because it best represents the infinite."
And again, "Though the arts are in some respects isolated, yet there is one which seems to profit by the resources of all, and that is Poetry. With words, Poetry can paint and sculpture; she can build edifices like an architect; she unites, to some extent, melody and music. She is, so to say, the center in which all arts unite."
A true poem is a gallery of pictures.
It must, I think, be admitted that painting and sculpture can give us a clearer and more vivid idea of an object we have never seen than any description can convey. But when we have once seen it, then on the contrary there are many points which the poet brings before us, and which perhaps neither in the representation, nor even in nature, should we perceive for ourselves. Objects can be most vividly brought before us by the artist, actions by the poet; space is the domain of Art, time of Poetry. [1]
Take, for instance, as a typical instance, female beauty. How labored and how cold any description appears. The greatest poets recognize this; as, for instance, when Scott wishes us to realize the Lady of the Lake he does not attempt any description, but just mentions her attitude and then adds—
"And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace
A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace,
Of finer form or lovelier face!"