In one word, then, the important thing that needs to be borne in mind in judging of poetry, is that it is an art, and partakes of the nature of the fine arts; and that, as such, its one essential is a representative form appealing to a man through that which causes him to admire the beautiful. Tennyson has expressed this truth well in what he calls The Moral of his Day-Dream.

So, Lady Flora, take my lay,

And if you find no moral there,
Go, look in any glass and say,

What moral is in being fair.

O to what uses shall we put

The wildweed-flower that simply blows?
And is there any moral shut

Within the bosom of the rose?

But he has suggested in his next stanza another truth that needs to be considered in connection with the last, before all the facts concerning the functions of poetry in the world can be understood.

But any man that walks the mead

In bud, or blade, or bloom, may find,

According as his humors lead,

A meaning suited to his mind.

And liberal applications lie

In Art like Nature, dearest friend,

So 't were to cramp its use, if I

Should hook it to some useful end.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE USEFUL ENDS OF POETIC REPRESENTATION.

These are all developed from Possibilities and Methods of Expression underlying equally the Formation of Poetic and of all Language-Poetry forced to recognize that Nature symbolizes Processes of Thought-Influence of this Recognition upon Conceptions of Truth, Human and Divine, Scientific and Theologic-And its Effects upon Feeling and Action-Conclusion.

PERHAPS this discussion of poetry as a representa

tive art can be brought to a close in no better way than by dwelling for a moment upon the thought suggested by the stanza at the end of the last chapter. Poetry is not, in a technical sense, a useful art, yet its forms have their uses, and many uses-as many, in fact, as have the forms of nature itself, which poetry, when it fulfils its mission, employs in its representations. To give a complete list of these uses here would be irrelevant. It is sufficient to suggest, that in the last analysis all of them are developed from possibilities and methods of expression, underlying the formation of all language but especially of poetic language.

Language involves, as we have found, a representation of mental facts and processes through the use of analogous external facts and processes, which alone are apprehensible to others, and which alone, therefore, can make others apprehend our thoughts. But facts and processes fitted to furnish such representations may be

perceived on every side of us in the objects and operations of what we term nature. It is the poet, however, who is most conscious of these analogies, for he, instead of accepting those noticed by others and embodied in conventional words, is constantly seeking for new ones and using these. To the poet, and the reader of poetry, therefore, all nature appears to be, in a peculiar sense, a representation, a repetition, a projection into the realm of matter, of the immaterial processes of thought within the mind. This, as I interpret it, is what Wordsworth meant when he said:

I have learned

To look on nature not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but-

because finding in nature the representations of human thought

hearing oftentimes

The still, sad music of humanity.

-Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey.

There is, accordingly, a literal as well as a figurative. sense, in which the poet

Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

-As You Like It, ii., 1: Shakespear.

Whatever others may say or think,

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks

A various language.

-Thanatopsis: Bryant.

In a true sense of the term she has a voice; and she has more than this: she has a voice which says something, which imparts definite intelligence. We have found how in every process in one department of nature, the mind of

poetry finds the image of a process in another department of nature. Flower," says Tennyson,

Flower in the crannied wall,

I pluck you out of the crannies ;-
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower-but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

-Flower in the Crannied Wall.

To extend this thought, here is a rose-bush. When it begins to grow, it is small and weak and simple. As it develops, it becomes large and strong and complex. So does every other plant in nature; so does a man; so does a nation; so does all humanity; so, as far as we can know, does the entire substance that develops for the formation of our globe. One mode of operation, one process, we find everywhere. If this be so, then to the ear skilled to listen to the voice in nature, what is all the universe but a mighty auditorium-in which every tale is re-echoed endlessly beneath, about, and above, through every nook of its grand crypts and aisles and arches? But, again, if all created things bear harmonious reports with reference to the laws controlling them, what inference must follow from this? In view of it, what else can a man do but attribute all these processes, one in mode, to a single source ?—and, more than this, what can he do but accept the import of these processes, the methods indicated in them, the principles exemplified by them, as applicable to all things,-in other words, as revelations of the universal truth? So the poet finds not only thought in nature, but also truth.

Once more, subtly connected with these facts are others. If nature can represent the thought, frame the language of the human mind,-why, according to the

same analogy, can it not represent the thought, frame the language of a greater Creative Mind? And if all nature represent the same kind of thought, i. e., analogous thought, or truth that is harmonious, why is not this Creative Mind one mind? We all know how it is with man when he represents in language any thing true with reference to his inner self. Take that experience, in some of the manifestations of which religious people believe that he most resembles the Unseen One. Think how love, which is begotten often in a single glance, and is matured in a single thrill, gives vent to its invisible intensity. How infinite in range and in variety are those material forms of earth and air and fire and water which are used by man as figures through which to represent the emotion within him! What extended though sweet tales, what endless repetitions of comparisons from hills and valleys, streams and oceans, flowers and clouds, are made to revolve about that soul which, through their visible agency, endeavors to picture in poetry spiritual conditions and relations which would remain unrevealed but for the possibility of thus indirectly symbolizing them. Now if this be so with human love, why should not the Great Heart whose calm beating works the pulses of the universe, express divine love through similar processes evolving infinitely and eternally into forms not ideal and poetic, but real and tangible,-in fact, into forms which we term those of nature. This is the question with which, wittingly or unwittingly, poetry and poetic faith always have confronted and always must confront merely natural science and scientific skepticism. Therefore, Bailey wrote the truth, when he said.

Poetry is itself a thing of God

He made his prophets poets, and the more