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2. Humanity.-The life of man abounds in materials for poetry. Man's physical strength and dazzling deeds; his intellectual powers and the wonders they have achieved; his acts of courage, of kindness, and of self-sacrifice; but, especially, his emotional nature, his displays of tenderness, of sympathy, of affection, or of love; his moral and religious sentiments, — all these may be the theme of poetry.

3. Imagination. —Not the real world alone, but the ideal, the world created and peopled by the imagination, is available for the purposes of poetry. Plot, incident, character, all that springs from the fertile fancy of the poet, may be employed by him to charm and delight the mind, even to inspire hope and to influence conduct by lofty ideals.

While the poet lays these vast fields under contribution, he must select in each with due regard to the demands of our æsthetic nature. Whatever is disgusting, offensive, or even indifferent, must be rejected.

In the selection and treatment of subjects, the following points may be observed:

1. Poetry chooses for its themes and illustrations the concrete rather than the abstract, and the particular rather than the general.

2. Poetry collects together a greater number of beauties and excellences, more lively incidents, more sparkling wit, more charming figures of speech, than are compressed within the same limits in prose. Prose is a meadow with here and there a daisy or a primrose; poetry is a flower garden clustering with lovely forms and colors, and fragrant with sweet odors.

3. Continuing this process of combination, poetry indulges more or less in idealizing its object. Its scenes are more beautiful than the actual; its heroes are more valiant and noble, its characters more virtuous and lofty than those met with in life; while its justice gratifies our feelings rather than satisfies our sense of right.

4. Poetry does not always reject painful subjects. They may become themes of poetry when the distressing effects they produce

are fully redeemed by the beauty of the language or imagery, by vivid descriptions of the nobility of fortitude under suffering, or by the pleasurable emotions of the sympathy they arouse.

5. In its treatment of subjects, poetry studies to embody all the elegances and all the attractions of style. In the story, in the incidents, in the scenes, in the characters, and in the expression of emotion, it pays a stricter attention to the demands of Harmony than does prose in its loftiest strain.

DIVISIONS OF POETRY.

Poetry is usually classified into Epic, Dramatic, Lyric, and Didactic.

The first two of these divisions are the same in matter, the essential element of each is a story, but they differ in the manner of presenting their subject. In the Drama, the author never appears; his characters speak and act for themselves. In the Epic the writer is always present, telling us of the actions and speeches of others.

1. Epic, or Narrative, Poetry must contain a story. It is subdivided into

a. THE GREAT EPIC.

This must have —

(a) A great and noble subject.

(b) Grave and dignified treatment.

(c) A hero and other important actors.

(d) A complete and complicated plot or story.

(e) The events chiefly or wholly under superhuman control.

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Examples. Milton's Paradise Lost; Pollock's Course of Time; Beowulf.

b. THE METRICAL ROMANCE. As compared with the Great Epic, (1) the subject is less lofty and important; (2) the treatment is more easy and familiar; (3) the control of events is partially or wholly human; (4) more prominence is given to Love; (5) the metre is lighter.

Examples. Spenser's Faerie Queene; Scott's Lady of the Lake; Moore's Loves of the Angels.

c. THE TALE is still less formal than the Romance, and its treatment admits of greater ease and variety.

Examples.- Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; Byron's Corsair; Tennyson's Enoch Arden; Longfellow's Evangeline. It sometimes takes the form of a metrical history; as Dryden's Annus Mirabilis.

d. THE BALLAD contains a simple and rapid relation of some incident of war, love, or daily life.

Examples. Chevy Chase; Robin Hood; John Gilpin; Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome.

e. THE MIXED EPIC is a poem that contains a story with which is intermingled more or less of reflection and description. Examples. Byron's Childe Harold. Sometimes the story is not continuous, as in Wordsworth's Excursion. f. PASTORALS, IDYLLS, etc. These poems, which are of a mixed character, reflective, descriptive, and emotional, may be classed as Epic, since they contain a story more or less continuous.

Examples. Tennyson's Idylls of the King; Keats's Endymion; and Thomson's Seasons.

2. The Drama embraces all that part of poetry which, though narrative in its matter, yet does not present its subject in the form of a relation, but allows its characters to appear and speak and act for themselves. It is divided into

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a. TRAGEDY. This deals with solemn, serious, and grave topics; and is intended to move the deepest feelings of pity, admiration, and awe.

There must be

(a) A plot more or less complicated and important.
(b) A leading character, or characters, and several less in
importance.

(c) Unity of subject and of action.

Examples. Hamlet; Macbeth; Romeo and Juliet.

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b. COMEDY is designed to provoke mirth, or, at least, pleasurable emotion, and consequently chooses its subjects from the follies, accidents, or humors of life. As in the tragedy there must be a plot, and much of the interest often arises from the skill with which it is woven and developed, as well as from the ridiculous situations in which the characters are placed.

The Comedy is divided into the Comedy proper, the Farce, the Opera, the Melodrama, and the Mask.

A FARCE is a short comedy, and consists of extravagant acts and ridiculous situations.

AN OPERA is a kind of comedy in which the actors sing their parts.

A MELODRAMA is partly spoken and partly sung.

A MASK is a romantic scene with supernatural characters.

3. Lyric Poetry. In Epic and in Dramatic poetry the poet voices the acts, words, and thoughts of others; in Lyric poetry he expresses his own thoughts and feelings.

Lyric poetry may be classified as follows:

a. ODES. These express a wide range of feeling, reaching from the gay and thoughtful to the noblest and most sublime.

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Examples. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale; Collins's Ode on the Passions; Milton's Hymn on the Nativity.

b. SONGS. These embrace a vast variety of subjects, sacred and secular.

(a) Sacred songs comprise psalms, hymns, anthems,

choruses, etc.

(b) Secular songs may be patriotic, comic, sentimental, moral, of love, of war, etc.

C. THE ELEGY contains reflections on some mournful subject, personal or general.

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Examples. Milton's Lycidas; Gray's Elegy written in a Country Churchyard.

d. THE SONNET is a poem of fourteen lines.

It may deal with any subject, and is always of the same metre, iambic pentameter. Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth are the great names in this species of poetry.

e. THE SIMPLE LYRIC. Many minor Lyric poems cannot be said to possess the characteristics of any of these classes. They are such as Wordsworth's Cuckoo; Rosetti's Cloud Confines; Mrs. Browning's A Dead Rose; O. W. Holmes's Contentment.

4. Didactic Poetry attempts to combine instruction with pleasure. As its object is partially the same as that of Persuasion, it employs most of the means mentioned under that head. Examples. — Pope's Moral Essays; Cowper's Task.

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Nearly allied to Didactic Poetry is Satiric Poetry, but it departs still further from the true purpose of giving pleasure. Indeed, it simply assumes the form of poetry to increase its venom. its object is similar to that of prose compositions of the satiric class, it uses the methods named on pages 253, 254.

Examples. Dryden's Absalom and Ahitophel; Johnson's London; Lowell's Biglow Papers.

EXERCISE XCVII.

POETRY.

1. How does poetry differ from prose?

2. What do you understand by the materials of poetry?

3. Where does poetry select its materials?

4. How is the choice of the subjects of poetry limited?

5. What methods of treatment are peculiar to poetry?

6. Name the leading divisions of poetry.

7. Name the classes of epic poetry, and give the characteristics of each.

8. Name an example of each class of epic poetry.

9. Give a minute account of the structure of any epic poem you have read.

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