FOREWORD This little treatise does not aim to create poets-Heaven must do that; but it does seek to furnish those who have poetic inspirations with the knowledge of how to master the forms of expression. Poetry is first a gift, then an art-both the gift and the art demand cultivation. Why is he honor'd with a poet's name, Who neither knows, nor would observe a rule; Rather than own his ignorance, and learn? * Unpolished verses pass with many men, As men may pardon, but will never praise. Read them by day, and think of them by night. So advised Horace in his "Ars Poetica," and so would every accomplished poet advise today. Industry is not a substitute for inspiration, but it is an admirable assistant. It is hoped particularly that young writers may take pains to follow the exercises appended to nearly every chapter. The constant practice of verse-making by those who covet a mastery of form cannot be too highly commended. A thousand pitfalls are here pointed out whose deeps yawn for the unwary; a thousand interesting paths are charted for those who abhor monotony. Only let the versifier make himself master of a harmonious rhythm, an easy style, correct metrical form, and a wide variety of stanzas, and even though no high gifts are his he may hope to produce pleasing verse. But let him not enchain himself with a multitude of rules. A knowledge of the manifold means of expression must help and not hinder. "For the artist in verse," writes Sidney Lanier, "there is no law: the perception and love of beauty constitute the whole outfit; and what is herein set forth is to be taken merely as enlarging that perception and exalting that love." These words the authors desire in spirit to make their own. Teachers, it is hoped, will find the simple and progressive arrangement of this book, its freedom from unexplained technicalities, and the abundant questions and exercises provided at the close of the several chapters, a sufficient promise of its usefulness as a class-room text, while those who adopt it for individual study may find those same qualities not without value. The authors acknowledge gratefully the help given by Miss Louise R. Bull, Miss Marie R. Bunker, and Mr. Francis A. MacBeath, Jr., in reading and criticising the manuscript of this volume; and the valuable assistance of Mr. Robert Thomas Hardy in reading the proof. Thanks are also due the publishers, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., for courteous permission to use illustrative extracts from the poems of Longfellow, Bryant, Lowell, Holmes, Saxe, Phoebe Cary, and Bayard Taylor; J. B. Lippincott Co., publishers of Lippincott's Magazine, for the use of the poems and light verse by John Kendrick Bangs, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Carolyn Wells, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Chester Firkins, Walt Mason, McLandburg Wilson, Anne Warrington Witherup, La Touche Hancock, Harold Susman, Robert Thomas Hardy, Edmund F. Moberly, James H. Hubbard, Dudley Glass, Sam S. Stinson, Cecilia A. Loizeaux, Katharine Perry, L. C. Davis, Frederic Moxon, G. Mayo, T. C. McConnell, Charles C. Jones, Harry A. Rothrock, Charles H. La Tourette, J. G. Neumarker, Frank M. Bicknell, Augustus W. Breeden, Karl von Kraft, “C. H.,” “J. B. E.," and "M. M. P. K.;" the Century Co., and Mrs. Helena de K. Gilder, for "Sonnet on the Sonnet," by Richard Watson Gilder; W. B. Conkey Co., and also the author, for "Old Rhythm and Rhyme," from "Picked Poems," by Ella Wheeler Wilcox; the publishers of Puck, as well as the author, for "In Mournful Numbers," by George B. Morewood; Forbes & Co., publishers, for Ben King's parody on "The Bridge;" Small, Maynard & Co., for the poem "Fame," from Father John B. Tabb's volume, "Lyrics;" Miss Carolyn Wells for several excerpts from her anthologies, elsewhere referred to, and for her "Limericks" and "Dithyramb to an Aëroplane;" Mr. Samuel Scoville, Jr., for his "Villanelle;" and Mr. Edward J. Wheeler, for his "Kitty." PHILADELPHIA, THE AUTHORS. Y CHAPTER I THE NATURE OF POETRY Nature should lead the true poet by the hand, and he has far better things to do than to busy himself in counting the warts upon it, as Pope did. A cup of water from Hippocrene, tasting, as it must, of innocent pastoral sights and sounds, of the bleat of lambs, of the shadows of leaves and flowers that have leaned over it, of the rosy hands of children whose privilege it ever is to paddle in it, of the low words of lovers who have walked by its side in the moonlight, of the tears of the poor Hagars of the world who have drunk from it, would choke a satirist. His thoughts of the country must have a savor of Jack Ketch, and see no beauty but in a hemp-field. Poetry is something to make us wiser and better, by continually revealing those types of beauty and truth which God has set in all men's souls; not by picking out the petty faults of our neighbors to make a mock of. -JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, Conversations on Some of the Old Poets. Since time-out-of-mind, critics have disputed over the problem, What is poetry? and even today no formal definition is widely accepted. Indeed, it is likely that we shall never have a precise and comprehensive positive definition, because so imaginative a subject must always be viewed imaginatively, and that is as much as to say that varied minds at different periods will view poetry variously. Besides, as Hammerton observes with regard to pictorial art, the affections often disturb the balance of judgment, and what an individual loves in poetry is likely to seem to |