a perfect line of verse that compression and suggestive quality are the two prime factors of word arrangement. Each word should bear its full part in the line—each word should not only convey its own idea, but enhance its preceding and succeeding fellow, for an ideal line of poetry is not a chain of so many links, but a galaxy of mutually reflecting gems. How distressing, then, are those evident attempts at padding, like her face so jair, which disclose that a line needs to be filled out and not an idea wherewith to upholster it!

Consider the mutual shining of each word in these lines -consider the compressed and efficient power of every phase of the poet's choice and arrangement of his words:

Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depths of clouds, that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, a while bowed low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapory cloud,

To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise,

Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent skies,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

-COLERIDGE, Hymn before Sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni.

In this example we have only a very few unusual words, yet such is their arrangement that they are surcharged with bigness. The whole stanza throbs with great emotions the thoughts tower huge, not a single word or group of words but connotes the large spirit of the poem. The language is simple, yet it deals with vast spaces, unmeasured heights, and things uncontained by human limits. Here, then, is the secret of poetic language-words perfectly expressive of poetic thoughts.

In Coleridge's "Hymn" we see not only the choice of poetic words, the poetic grouping of those words, and the poetic use of common words, but we discern a third great element in the language of poetry:

3. Imagery

"The business of poetry," writes Macaulay, "is with images, and not with words." "Metaphors come of love rather than of thought," says Sidney Lanier. "They arise in the heart as vapors; they gather themselves in the brain as shapes; they then emerge from lip, from pen, from brush, from chisel, from violin, as full works, as creations, as art."

Here is true doctrine. Poetry can no more exist without imagery than can the poet sing without visions. The poetic soul in poetic mood sees nothing singly-all life comes to him in dualities, in complexities, and the inner relationships of life which are unseen by the crass eye are disclosed to him because he is a seer. His vocation is to discern and set forth the similitudes of things unseen; he

must, because it is in his heart to do so, reveal to the rest of us the spiritual, the high, the healing, the up-pointing likenesses of common things, so that we may know that the lowliest beings which tread the earth may have their communion in the heights. So, too, must he translate the meaning of the difficult, the remote, the forbidding, until it is an open language that the simple may read. He will be a seer of beautiful and truthful and inspiring images, therefore, or he will be no poet-no "maker," as the poet is.

Now all this may sound sublimated and impracticable. Perhaps it is, for the poet is not first of all practical. But the artist uses not only tools but earthy pigments and cold marbles for his creations; and the poet uses words for his evocations. His imagery is, if not according to law, at least wrought in ways we have come to understand. The spirit of poetry we may not define, but its manner is more readily understood. We know that when the mind institutes a comparison and phrases it in words, the result is a figure a turn-of speech, and the poetic mind will not be content to dream, to see, his comparisons, but will seek for words wherewith to embody them. This is what Edmund Clarence Stedman says1:

"What I may call the constant, the habitual, imagination of a true poet is shown by his instinct for words,— those keys which all may clatter, and which yield their music to so few. He finds the inevitable word or phrase,' unfound before, and it becomes classical in a moment. The power of words and the gift of their selection are un1 "The Nature and Elements of Poetry," p. 240.

comprehended by writers who have all trite and hackneyed phrases at the pen's end. The imagination begets original diction, suggestive epithets, verbs implying extended scenes and events, phrases which are a delight, and which, as we say, speak volumes, single notes which establish the dominant tone."

The practice of phrasing images with delicacy and precision is essential for good poetic expression, hence the importance of a working knowledge of at least the commonest figures of speech cannot be overestimated.

Some of the most frequently used figurative forms are appended, both in simple definition and example.

SIMILE: A formal comparison of unlike objects, employing such words of comparison as like, as, like unto,

etc.

True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learnt to dance.

-POPE, Essay on Criticism.

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath.

—SHAKESPEARE, Merchant of Venice.

METAPHOR: An informal comparison of unlike objects by declaring or implying that one thing is another, without the use of comparing words.

Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven;

A spark of that immortal fire

With angels shared, by Alla given,

To lift from earth our low desire.

-BYRON, The Giaour.

ANTITHESIS: A use of contrasts in thought and expres

sion.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,

Ring, happy bells, across the snow:

The year is going, let him go;

Ring out the false, ring in the true.

-TENNYSON, In Memoriam.

METONYMY: The use of the name of one object when another is clearly implied-as the cause for the effect, or the reverse; the container for the thing contained; or the sign for the thing it stands for.

The bright death quivered at the victim's throat;
Touch'd; and I knew no more.

—TENNYSON, A Dream of Fair Women.

SYNECDOCHE: Closely akin to metonymy, synecdoche makes some important part of an object stand for the whole, or the whole for the part.

The gilded parapets were crown'd

With faces, and the great tower fill'd with eyes
Up to the summit, and the trumpets blew.

-TENNYSON, Pelleas and Etarre.