Poetry
Outline · 2 ›
1.The nature and definition of poetry
René Descartes, Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking the Truth in the SciencesVol. 34
- p. 7–8Poesy has ravishing graces; fable stirs the mind.read · scan
William Wordsworth, Preface to Poems (1815)Vol. 39
- p. 298–299Classifies poetic forms: narrative, dramatic, lyrical, idyllium and didactic, with examples and the role of music in each.read · scan
- p. 299Discusses satire's claim to be poetry and explains how the author arranged his poems by mental powers, mould, and subject.read · scan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On Poesy or ArtVol. 27
- p. 256–257Proposes 'poesy' as the generic term, with poetry the species using articulate speech.read · scan
John Stuart Mill, AutobiographyVol. 25
- p. 123Mill wrote a considerable article on the theory of Poetry.read · scan
Giuseppe Mazzini, Byron and GoetheVol. 32
- p. 378–379Mazzini asks for criticism guided by the mission and law of poetry rather than fixed notions of the beautiful.read · scan
Hippolyte Taine, Introduction to the History of English LiteratureVol. 39
- p. 410A literary work is a transcript of contemporary manners and intellect, not an isolated caprice of imagination.read · scan
- p. 419Poetry is minimal, magnificent, or vehement exclamation depending on how a race forms general conceptions.read · scan
- p. 433Great poems, novels and confessions are instructive because beautiful; literature is valued as documents and monuments.read · scan
- p. 433–436Literature's office is to record sentiments; great literature is the best document of a people's feelings, surpassing codes and catechisms.read · scan
1a.Poetry as making and imitation
See also: Memory and Imagination 6b
Plato, PhaedoVol. 2
- p. 48Socrates, in prison, versified Aesop's fables and wrote a hymn to Apollo, saying a poet must make stories, not merely words.read · scan
Sir Thomas More, UtopiaVol. 36
- p. 241More's writing is likened to painting with a pencil, praising his craft in describing Utopia.read · scan
Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of PoesyVol. 27
- p. 9–10Poet means maker; unlike other arts bound to nature, the poet creates a golden world surpassing nature's brazen one.read · scan
- p. 10–11Poesy is an art of imitation, a speaking picture, to teach and delight; the poet's invention exceeds nature's.read · scan
- p. 11–12Three kinds of poets: those imitating God (Psalms, Job), philosophical poets, and true poets who imitate what may and should be, to teach and delight.read · scan
William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of DenmarkVol. 46
- p. 148–149Purpose of playing is to hold the mirror up to nature; actors should suit action to word and avoid overdoing or clowning.read · scan
John Dryden, All for Love; or, The World Well LostVol. 18
- p. 14Poetry is a picture of nature; tragedy needs a critic who understands its excellences.read · scan
Thomas Gray, PoemsVol. 40
- p. 460–462Poetry adorns war, love and severe truth with fairy fiction; Milton and Shakespeare's tragedy stated.read · scan
Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and BeautifulVol. 24
- p. 43Poems and still-life paintings of humble objects please through imitation and the imitator's skill.read · scan
- p. 137Poetry is not strictly an art of imitation; only dramatic poetry imitates passions, descriptive poetry works by substitution.read · scan
William Wordsworth, Prefaces to Various Volumes of PoemsVol. 39
- p. 279Poetry is the most philosophic writing, its object general truth carried into the heart by passion; the image of man and nature.read · scan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, On Poesy or ArtVol. 27
- p. 255Poetry is purely human: passion imitates order, elevating the mind and tempering passion through images.read · scan
Leigh Hunt, On the Realities of ImaginationVol. 27
- p. 292–293Poets are creators who bring forth the images and beauties of nature; their creations touch us as truly as real things.read · scan
- p. 294Shakespeare's Tempest island exemplifies the worlds poets discover for us, richer than Columbus's discovery.read · scan
- p. 294Homer's and Shakespeare's moon; Pope's lock of hair immortalised as a constellation by poetic art.read · scan
Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter ScottVol. 25
- p. 396Every heroic poem is at bottom a biography and every faithful life a heroic poem; contrasts Odyssey with Pickwick by commercial value.read · scan
George Long, The Philosophy of AntoninusVol. 2
- p. 334–336Homer makes Achilles and Zeus speak appropriately to their characters.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, FriendshipVol. 5
- p. 106Friends are the new-born poetry of God, living hymn, ode and epic, not dead books.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5
- p. 437Bacon's doctrine that poetry accommodates shows of things to desires of mind; Zoroastrian 'apparent pictures of unapparent natures'.read · scan
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1280–1281Verse celebrates craftsmanship in imaginative narrative form.read · scan
1b.Poetry as expression of imagination and feeling
The Book of PsalmsVol. 44
- p. 197–199The poet's heart overflows and his tongue is 'the pen of a ready writer,' composing a song for the king.read · scan
David Hume, Of the Standard of TasteVol. 27
- p. 214Poetry aims to please through passion and imagination; characters must reason and act suitably.read · scan
Friedrich von Schiller, Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of ManVol. 32
- p. 225Doubts whether a mind absorbed in pure reason can take on the free action of poetry and grasp individuality.read · scan
William Wordsworth, Prefaces to Various Volumes of PoemsVol. 39
- p. 272–273Wordsworth defends his poems' worthy purpose; good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings shaped by long thought, against trivial verse.read · scan
- p. 286Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, arising from emotion recollected in tranquillity; metre adds delight to the description of passion.read · scan
William Wordsworth, Preface to Poems (1815)Vol. 39
- p. 305–306Ranks Scripture, Milton, Spenser and Shakespeare as storehouses of enthusiastic and dramatic imagination, and Wordsworth claims his own poems exercise the faculty on worthy objects.read · scan
William Wordsworth, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 647–649Narrator addresses the reader, saying a tale lies in everything for those with thoughtful minds.read · scan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 730The poet laments loss of imaginative power.read · scan
Leigh Hunt, On the Realities of ImaginationVol. 27
- p. 291Reading the poets' magical works summons glad imaginations that give delicious smiles and tears.read · scan
Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of PoetryVol. 27
- p. 329Poetry defined as the expression of the imagination, connate with man's origin, arising from the child's and savage's expressive response to impressions.read · scan
- p. 354–355Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of best minds; redeems evanescent visitations and makes the beautiful immortal.read · scan
Percy Bysshe Shelley, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 844–845Where the soul need not repress its music lest it find no echo in another's mind.read · scan
- p. 846–848Lyric of natural imagery in which the poet speaks of his own restless mind.read · scan
John Keats, PoemsVol. 41
- p. 871Winged Fancy as the poet's imaginative power.read · scan
- p. 897–898Fear that he may die before his pen has gleaned his teeming brain; great poets give the world a new heart.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American ScholarVol. 5
- p. 8The scholar receives the world and utters it again, turning business into poetry and dead fact into quick thought.read · scan
- p. 16The poet recording spontaneous thoughts in solitude finds they are true for men in crowded cities.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-RelianceVol. 5
- p. 59Original verses by a painter admonish the soul; great works of art teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Over-SoulVol. 5
- p. 136A strain of poetry or Plato or Shakspeare refreshes in sickness.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, CirclesVol. 5
- p. 154–155The poet's imagination breaks our habits and shows our possibilities; wisdom lies in sonnet and play more than treatise.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The PoetVol. 5
- p. 168Poetry raises the low and offensive; every word was once a poem, and a poem need not be long.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, NatureVol. 5
- p. 225The young poet's imagination and the muse enhance the gifts of wealth through mythic, romantic pictures.read · scan
- p. 232–233A man cannot write unless he thinks his writing important; music, poetry and language are suggestions, not satisfactions.read · scan
- p. 233–235The poet feels himself never near enough to his object in nature.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, English TraitsVol. 5
- p. 436Analogy and Platonic tendency are poetic; those demanding heaps of facts have no poetic power.read · scan
Hans Christian Andersen, TalesVol. 17
- p. 322–323The Shadow claims to have lived in Poetry's house, seeing her as a charming, shining maiden glimpsed only in twilight and from afar.read · scan
- p. 323The Shadow claims kinship with Poetry and revelation of its nature in her antechamber; the Learned Man imagines her court full of gods and heroes.read · scan
- p. 360–361The boys stand together in the vast church of nature and of poetry.read · scan
John Stuart Mill, AutobiographyVol. 25
- p. 71Poetical culture was lacking, displaced by logic and analysis.read · scan
- p. 87–89Coleridge's lines on work without hope describe his malady.read · scan
- p. 92–93Byron's poetry of intense feeling worsened Mill's depression, while Wordsworth's poems suited his mental needs.read · scan
- p. 94Wordsworth's poems express states of feeling coloured by thought under the excitement of beauty, culturing the feelings.read · scan
- p. 108–110Carlyle's writings were a haze of poetry and German metaphysics, benefiting Mill not as philosophy to instruct but as poetry to animate.read · scan
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1278–1280Children are living poems, better than all the balladsread · scan
Giuseppe Mazzini, Byron and GoetheVol. 32
- p. 377Byron and Goethe presented as the two representative poets of an age, rulers of its poetry, whose passing seemed to extinguish poetry's sacred flame.read · scan
- p. 379–380Poetry changes with the times, expresses society, and draws on tradition and prophetic instinct; Byron and Goethe summed up an era.read · scan
- p. 380Byron and Goethe as the poetic expression of a dying age of individuality; poetry must enlarge its sphere.read · scan
- p. 380–381Byron is the poet of subjective individuality, projecting his own soul onto the world; Goethe the objective.read · scan
- p. 393Imitators have no lasting influence; Byron defines poetry as the feeling of a former world and of a future, preferring activity to art.read · scan
- p. 393–395Quotes Byron's verse on freedom as expression of his spirit; poetry shown as vehicle of liberty and the poet's character.read · scan
Oliver Wendell Holmes, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1365–1367The poet's lyric reflection turns a shell into a voice singing to the soul.read · scan
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the MastVol. 23
- p. 104–105The solitary grave is the only thing in California from which he can extract anything like poetry.read · scan
- p. 136He is glad that his poetry and romance were not deadened by laborious sailor's life.read · scan
Emily Brontë, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1110–1111Lyric of personal credo and confession in song.read · scan
Sidney Lanier, PoemsVol. 42
- p. 1390–1391Lyrical apostrophe to the oaks and vines, with the poet's soul drinking the oak's soul.read · scan
Robert Louis Stevenson, Truth of IntercourseVol. 28
- p. 278Expressing a subtle feeling in words to reconcile a friend is itself writing poetry of a high order.read · scan
1c.Poetry as the creation of beauty
Blaise Pascal, ThoughtsVol. 48
- p. 18We do not know the object of poetry or the natural model to imitate, so we coin fantastic jargon called poetical beauty.read · scan
Edgar Allan Poe, The Poetic PrincipleVol. 28
- p. 373–374Poe argues a poem may be improperly brief; undue brevity yields only epigram, never profound effect; cites Shelley's serenade and Willis as neglected.read · scan
- p. 376–377Mere repetition of sights and sounds is not poetry; poetry is the struggle to apprehend supernal loveliness.read · scan
- p. 377–378Defines poetry of words as the Rhythmical Creation of Beauty, with Taste as sole arbiter; music, metre and rhyme are vital adjuncts.read · scan
- p. 378–379Poem's province is Beauty; passion, duty and truth may enter only subordinate to it; Longfellow's proem cited.read · scan
- p. 391Poe concludes that the Poetic Principle is the aspiration for supernal beauty, an elevating excitement of the soul, distinct from passion or truth.read · scan
1d.Poetry's relation to prose and to metre
See also: Language 6b
The Book of JobVol. 44
- p. 73–74Lament in parallel verse with imagery of darkness.read · scan
Pliny the Younger, Letters of PlinyVol. 9
- p. 347–348Cites Homer's sublime imagery and denies that poets and orators are bound by different laws of expression.read · scan
Stories from the Thousand and One NightsVol. 16
- p. 223Nur-ed-Din tells his story in verse; the Khalifeh says prose is mere talk while verse is words like pearls.read · scan
The Story of the Volsungs and NiblungsVol. 49
- p. 315–316Prose narrative is interspersed with verse celebrating Sigurd's ride through the fire.read · scan
- p. 328–330The prose gives way to the lament of Gudrun in verse form.read · scan
Michel de Montaigne, Of the Institution and Education of ChildrenVol. 32
- p. 29Montaigne says poetry is his only delight; a sentence pent in measured verse strikes with more force, like a trumpet's voice.read · scan
- p. 61–62Good invention makes a poet, not good rhyme or verse; Menander's plot finished before the verse; many petty rhymers with swollen words.read · scan
Sir Philip Sidney, The Defense of PoesyVol. 27
- p. 7Greek philosophers and historians borrowed poetry's form; Plato's dialogues and Herodotus's history depend on poetic skill and invention.read · scan
- p. 12Poetry's kinds (heroic, lyric, tragic, comic, etc.); verse is only an ornament, since feigning notable images of virtues and vices with delightful teaching makes the poet.read · scan
- p. 30–31Answers scoffers at poetry and rhyme; poetry is not defined by verse, yet verse polishes speech with harmony.read · scan
- p. 31–32Verse is fit for memory and music, and the rules of the arts are compiled in it.read · scan
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio MediciVol. 3
- p. 323Tacitus and Cicero fell unawares into verse in their opening lines.read · scan
John Milton, Paradise LostVol. 4
- p. 180Their unmeditated eloquence in prose or numerous verse needs no lute.read · scan
Blaise Pascal, ThoughtsVol. 48
- p. 123–124Reflects on his own craft of writing thoughts without order, disorder being true order for his subject.read · scan
Alexander Pope, Solitude; On a Certain Lady at Court; Essay on ManVol. 40
- p. 407Pope explains choosing verse and rhyme: precepts are stronger, more memorable and more concise than in prose.read · scan
William Wordsworth, Prefaces to Various Volumes of PoemsVol. 39
- p. 276No essential difference exists between the language of prose and metrical composition; the same human blood circulates in both.read · scan
- p. 276Poetry's language is a selection of real men's speech, with metre added; the poet needs no foreign splendour beyond what passion suggests.read · scan
- p. 282–284Wordsworth defends writing in verse against poetic diction, arguing metre's regular laws heighten the pleasure that poetry gives about universal passions and nature.read · scan
- p. 285The end of poetry is excitement with overbalance of pleasure; metre tempers painful passion so pathetic matter can be endured in verse.read · scan
- p. 285–286Metre gives pleasurable surprise in pathetic scenes, as in Shakespeare, and lends passion to weak words.read · scan
- p. 288–289Compares Johnson's parody stanza with Babes in the Wood; the difference lies in the matter expressed, not in plain language or metre.read · scan
William Wordsworth, Appendix to Lyrical BalladsVol. 39
- p. 296Concludes that in works of imagination valuable ideas and feelings require the same language in prose or verse; metre is adventitious.read · scan
Percy Bysshe Shelley, A Defence of PoetryVol. 27
- p. 332–333Poetry restricted to metrical language created by the imaginative faculty; poets' fame exceeds that of other artists, rivaled only by legislators and founders of religions.read · scan
- p. 333–334Poetic language requires harmonious recurrence of sound; meter is traditional but not essential; great poets innovate, and prose writers and poets are not truly distinct.read · scan
- p. 335A poem is the image of life in eternal truth; great historians such as Herodotus, Plutarch and Livy were poets.read · scan
Victor Hugo, Preface to CromwellVol. 39
- p. 371–372Defends verse for drama: blame the versifiers not the form; Molière shows verse can express the true; verse is the optical form of thought.read · scan
- p. 372–373Hugo describes ideal dramatic verse: free, sincere, moving from comedy to tragedy, sublime to grotesque, faithful to rhyme, picturesque not descriptive.read · scan
- p. 373Verse on stage is a bronze form that fixes thought, aids actors and memory; prose is easier and lets mediocrity in.read · scan
Ralph Waldo Emerson, The PoetVol. 5
- p. 165A poem is made by a passionate metre-making thought, not metres; each age awaits its poet with a new confession.read · scan
John Stuart Mill, AutobiographyVol. 25
- p. 13–15Compelled to write English verse; father's reasons: verse expresses some things forcibly, and people overvalue it; Mill's views on Shakespeare.read · scan
Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of GrassVol. 39
- p. 393Poetic quality lies in the soul, not in rhyme, ornament or fluency; the poet shows the path between reality and souls.read · scan
Robert Louis Stevenson, Samuel PepysVol. 28
- p. 297Calls Pepys's prose 'the true prose of poetry', comparing him to Shelley, Shakespeare and Bunyan.read · scan
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