WHAT IS POETRY?' 269 



functions you may find or imagine would not be the 

 function of painting, and if you seek for that you will 

 not find it, because no such thing exists. And if this 

 should seem a bold thing to say, I would ask what is 

 the function of a soul growth? — of faith, hope and 

 charity, reverence — in one word, spirituality; of 

 the sense of beauty, the love of humanity, altruism, 

 the aspiration towards a lovelier, higher, better state : 



The desire of the moth for the star, 



Of the night for the morrow ; 

 The devotion to something afar, 



From the sphere of our sorrow. 



"The light that never was on sea or land; the 

 consecration and the poet's dream." 



And what, by the way, is the function of poetry ? 

 Let us inquire first what is poetry, and then we shall 

 perhaps know. Wordsworth said it was "emotion 

 recollected in tranquillity," the most famous defini- 

 tion yet given, but it was wrong and would have been 

 right if he had said it of music, seeing that poetry 

 is thought, imagination and emotion, whereas music 

 is wholly emotion — emotion recollected in tranquilHty 

 — passion purified from pain, sublimated, beautified, 

 glorified, but always passion, passion, passion and 

 nothing else. 



Shelley said it was "something divine," which 

 may be said, and has been said, of so many things 

 that it was not worth saying of poetry. Carlyle called 

 it "musical thought," a saying which in its essence 

 is a platitude. Santayana says it is " speech for its 

 own sake and sweetness," which is a good deal less 



