756 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION J. 
Shakespeare’s sonnets, which are included in the “ Golden 
Treasury.’ I cannot see that any good purpose is fulfilled 
by the study of this class of poetry by the young. If we 
educated with the idea of making poets, and courtly ones, 
the case would be different. 
There is another matter connected with lyric poetry about 
which I feel strongly and must speak briefly. There are 
many beautiful lyric poems whose meaning is so abstruse, 
obscure, or attenuated, that it is not comprehensible by the 
young, except perhaps by great effort. I refer to such 
poems as Wordsworth’s great ode “On Imitations,” &c., 
Blake’s ‘“‘ Whether on Ida’s shady brow ” and “ The Tiger,” 
Vaughan’s “ Happy those early days,’ parts of Tennyson’s 
“In Memoriam,” and many of the songs of Wordsworth, 
Keats, and Shelley. I believe that poems of this kind, 
though not fully understood, have, or may have, great 
influence upon the minds of the young. If learned by 
heart, they remain a perpetual possession, lying far back in 
the mind, subtly and unconsciously touching and directing 
the springs of feeling and thought. They act like fine 
melody, which carries no distinct formal idea to the mind, 
yet touches, stirs, and elevates. It is in poems of this kind 
that the most delicate, most stately, and beautiful rhythms 
of our tongue are attained, and such rhythms are a posses- 
sion and a treasure apart from the meaning they convey. 
I do not believe that any boy or girl could recite, mentally or 
aloud, Wordsworth’s “ Ode” or Blake’s ‘““ Whether on Ida’s 
shady brow” without being spiritually the better for it. 
Of this I am very deeply convinced, and I am sure that it is 
in this class, and by this indefinable touching of the 
imagination and the soul, that poetry has its best, deepest, 
and most lasting influence upon the minds of the young 
of both sexes. It is here and in this way, I think, that true 
poetry enriches life. 
I shall presently have occasion to speak of the danger 
of compelling children to read or learn poetry, and it is 
especially with reference to this class that I would emphasise 
the warning. I think this is too delicate and subtle an 
influence to be directed, as it were, by steam pressure upon 
the child-mind. I would remind you of Lamb’s comment 
on one of Wordsworth’s poems: ‘“ The instructions conveyed 
in it are too direct, they don’t slide into-the mind of the 
reader while he is imagining no such matter.” 
Of dramatic poetry I must also speak more briefly than 
I should like to do. The great bulk of the Elizabethan 
school, of which English literature is so justly proud, must, 
