730 POETRY 



way of looking at it. Xow, it is this fresh outlook and insight, this 

 power of viewing things and people out of the associations in which 

 the rest of mankind habitually view them, that is the root of the 

 whole matter. In the world of nature we find the poets moved even 

 to passion by objects that we hardly notice, or from long familiarity 

 have come to ignore. Their strong emotion arises from their fresh 

 vision. By means of that fresh vision the world never ceases to be an 

 interesting place to them. 



By the murmur of a spring, 

 Or the least bough's rustling, 

 By a daisy whose leaves spread 

 Shut when Titan goes to bed, 

 Or a shady bush or tree. 

 She could more infuse in me 

 Than all Nature's beauties can 

 In some other wiser man. 



So sang Wither of the Poetic Muse: and Blake expresses the same 

 truth in his inspired doggerel : 



What to others a trifle appears 

 Fills me full of smiles and tears. 



The converse of the proposition also holds true: what to others may 

 appear facts of the highest importance, may to the poet appear trifles. 

 Similarly in the world of men we find the poets as much interested in 

 the least as in the greatest, and we rind theiri unconcerned by many 

 of the distinctions which to mankind in general appear vital. "We find, 

 for example. Andrew Marvell introducing into his panegyric of Oliver 

 Protector a picture of King Charles at his execution, which embalms 

 the secret of all the cavalier loyaltv, and is to-day the oftenest quoted 

 passage of his poem. 



The poet's subjects, then, are borrowed from any quarter in the 

 whole range of nature and human experience: "the world is all before 

 him where to ehoose : '" anything that excites any deep emotion in him 

 is a fit topic for his verse, and it is our privilege for the moment, so 

 far as that one experience is concerned, to look through his eyes. In 

 this way the poets interpret the world to us. They also interpret us 

 to ourselves. They make adventurous voyage= into hitherto unsounded 

 seas of the human spirit, and bring us word of their discoveries. And 

 what they thus win becomes an inalienable possession to the race: the 

 boundaries of humanity are pushed back. This power of interpreting 

 the world and human life is sometimes spoken of as an idealizing 

 faculty, and no exception can be taken to the term so long as it is not 

 explained to mean that the poet tricks up what he sees in false lights 

 in order to please us. For anv one who considers the best poetry, 



