Music
too, though early known in calm and elementary forms, has within the
last two centuries been developed into almost a new art.
Of all the arts poetry is the most strikingly rational and articulate.
Its material is plain thought, plain words. We employ in it the
apparatus of conscious life. Poetry was therefore concerned in early
times entirely with things of the spirit. It dealt with persons, and
with them alone. It celebrated epic actions, recorded sagacious
judgments, or uttered in lyric song emotions primarily felt by an
individual, yet interpreting the common lot of man. But there has
occurred a great change in poetry too, a change notable during the
last century but initiated long before. Poetry has been growing
naturalistic, and is to-day disposed to reject all severance of body
and spirit. The great nature movement which we associate with the
names of Cowper, Burns, and Wordsworth, has withdrawn man's attention
from conscious responsibility, and has taught him to adore blind and
vast forces which he cannot fully comprehend. We all know the
refreshment and the deepening of life which this mystic new poetry has
brought. But it is hard to say whether poetry is nowadays a spiritual
or a natural art. Many of us would incline to the latter view, and
would hold that even in dealing with persons it treats them as
embodiments of natural forces.
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