talk. Or perhaps the language seems to be what you might call "poetic." You don't speak of an April rain as a "vernal shower," or call a wagon a "wain," or a field of ripening wheat "Ceres's golden reign," even if you have found out somewhere that Ceres was goddess of the harvest. And other words, like "tremulous," "tarn," "ethereal," seem to you poetic even if you do not fully understand their meaning. The language of poetry, in other words, seems somehow different from the language of everyday life. This sense of difference also springs, at times, from the order of words used by the poet as well as from their difficulty. Bryant begins a poem as follows:

To him who in the love of nature holds

Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.

The words here do not differ particularly from those of prose, yet we feel a certain difficulty that probably we should not have felt to the same degree if Bryant had written, in prose, "Nature speaks a various language to him who holds communion with her through her visible forms." The sentence is difficult, because the idea is abstract; we hesitate a bit over "various language" and "visible forms."

But the important thing for us to observe is that it is not because of the rime, or the capital letter, or the poetic words, or the order in which the words are placed that we have poetry. Prose may have all of these characteristics except the rime and the capitals. And the verse we read may have all these things, especially the unusual or very old words, and yet fail to appeal to us as poetry. On the other hand, a line in which every word is of the simplest, homeliest character, may be charged with the witchery that springs only from genuine poetry. Shakespeare. writes,

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank.

There is not a word here that we should call "poetic." The only departure from the usual English expression is in the word "sweet" where we should say "sweetly"-a use that was allowable

in Shakespeare's day. It is hard to say just what word or phrase gives the effect of pure beauty that we instantly feel. Perhaps it is the word "sleeps." If we try substituting some other word for it, "lies," "rests," "shines," we see that, after all, a word is poetic not because it is unusual, or old, or difficult, or musical, but because of some magic association that the poet knows how to evoke.

Now observe that the poet makes use of fact, just as the prose writer or the historian or the scientist. In the line just quoted the fact is a simple observation. Anyone would respond to the magic of the moonlight. Few would observe so closely the quiet beauty of the one spot that catches the poet's eye. And of these, none but the poet would have the sure instinct for expression that results in a line all compact with beauty.

Let us carry this study of the nature of poetry a bit farther to see how the poet makes use of fact, interpretation, and beauty. In a short poem, Rupert Brooke, a young poet who gave up his life in the Great War, speaks of the sadness that comes upon him at the close of day. Love, he thinks, is done; his life has lost its value; he wishes he might die. These are thoughts that come to thousands of weary men and women. Even those who do not feel so utterly hopeless may be conscious, amid all its beauty, of the sadness of the close of day. Numberless poets have expressed such feelings before. But Rupert Brooke turned from the glorious western sky and caught a vision of the pines:

Then from the sad west turning wearily,

I saw the pines against the white north sky
Very beautiful, and still, and bending over
Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky.

And he goes on to tell us of the peace he found, so that life no longer seemed hopeless to him,

Being glad of you, O pine-trees and the sky!

These lines contain no word not in your everyday vocabulary. The order of the words is about the same as that of prose. The poem contains rime, and the first word of each line begins with a capital letter; the words also are arranged in such a way as to bring

out the rhythm, the regular succession of accented and unaccented syllables that we usually find in poetry. But the true secret of the power of the lines, the thing that really makes them poetry, we shall have to find by applying other than these mechanical tests.

First of all, notice that facts of the poet's life and the fact of this observation of the pine-trees and the sky form the basis. Stated quite simply, the theme is as follows: A man who is disheartened because of the hardships he has undergone finds his sadness increased by the closing of the day. In despair at the thought that all the beauty of life is a temporary thing, passing as the sunlight fades in the west, he wishes for death. But suddenly he is aware of the pine-trees as they stand in clear outline against the cold northern sky. The piercing beauty of this scene, etched as with a painter's brush, so thrills him that he finds in the joy of its revelation courage to take new hold on life.

Here are facts of past experience and present mood. There are also the facts of the new observation the poet makes when he sees the pine-trees and the sky. Others have had the same experience of life. The beauty of the scene might also have been realized by the peasant, or the tired laborer, or the business man, or the traveler. But the poet gains from his experience and the revelation of beauty an interpretation of life. This he sets down for us, simply, but in unforgettable clearness of outline. In this expression of truth and beauty he does for us what we could not do for ourselves. The result is poetry, "the rhythmical creation of beauty."

Now the heart of this interpretation of beauty in the meaning of life by Rupert Brooke is in the lines that describe the picture:

Then from the sad west turning wearily,

I saw the pines against the white north sky,
Very beautiful and still, and bending over
Their sharp black heads against a quiet sky.

A great painter might turn these words into a picture that would convey in another form of art the same effect. Now that your eyes and imagination have been awakened by this pause over the little picture, very likely you will notice, on quiet evenings, the line of tall trees cast against a background of clear and quiet

sky. But the painter, like the poet, may make use of the scene which he pictures in order to call forth a mood of joy or pity or a sense of the beauty of life, or even to convey a comment on the meaning of life. Look for a moment at the picture called "The Song of the Lark" on page 20. Quite obviously the painter, wishing to give you an idea of the marvelous beauty of the song, cannot reproduce it. Obviously, also, he would gain nothing by giving you a picture of the bird itself. A thousand birds would present better possibilities in color of plumage, though their song would interest no one. So the artist chooses to convey his meaning by showing the effect which the song of the lark produces. To show this most clearly, he does not choose an animal-a dog barking up into the sky would not convey the idea. So also, a person of a conventional type, wearing the most recent model of clothes, trained by modern life not to let his feelings show in any expression of his face, would not do. The painter chooses a peasant girl, on her way to the fields, sickle in hand. Her face is not beautiful even in repose; at the moment chosen by the painter it is almost distorted as she looks toward the sky. She is trying to comprehend the emotion that the marvelous song awakens, trying also to discover the source of the song.

Now here, as in the poem about the pine-trees, you have a basis of fact. In this case it is the bare, plowed field, the peasant girl in the center, her ugly clothes, her almost brute strength, her face struggling to express the wonder that she is too untrained to try to conceal. But on this basis of fact you find that the picture suggests the effect that the artist desired to produce: What must have been the beauty of that bird-song, if an ignorant peasant girl was so powerfully moved by it?

So art, founded in fact, yet interprets the beauty and the meaning of life. The poet is like the painter in this respect. The peasant girl is dumb in the presence of the wonderful beauty of the song. But suppose the same song is heard by a poet. Like the peasant he is filled with wonder. Like her, he looks up into the sky whence comes the flow of melody, but discovers no bird. Apparently the sky itself is singing, so rich is the sound,

so all-pervasive. Like the painter, the poet can convey the impression of this beauty only through suggestion. He cannot reproduce it; he does not describe the bird itself. So he gives you an interpretation of this bird-song. Such a bird, soaring so far above earth that its form is lost to view, seems to him a solitary pilgrim of the sky, seeking to escape from earth

Ethereal minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky!

Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound?
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will,
Those quivering wings composed, that music still!
Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;

A privacy of glorious light is thine,

Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine;

Type of the wise who scar but never roam,

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!

Here there are but few references to the song itself "that music still," "pour upon the world a flood of harmony"—the quality of the song is suggested rather than expressed. The fact about the bird that the poet stresses most is its soaring far beyond reach of the human eye, yet its return to its nest. So he asks whether it despises the earth and wishes to be free, or whether "the wings aspire," while heart and eye keep true to the nest. In the "privacy of glorious light," far above the earth, is a different spirit from that of the nightingale, an instinct more divine. This leads to the real thought of the poet about the bird: its song comes from heaven, inspired by that privacy of glorious light that dwellers on the earth cannot know; it is the type of aspiration, yet it is true to the instinct of home and home relations. Wordsworth realizes, therefore, not merely the marvelous beauty of the song but also an ideal of life; it typifies the wise who soar but never roam,

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home.

Thus our three examples have shown something of the nature of poetry. In the first there is no interpretation, merely the suggestion of the unearthly beauty of the moonlight as it falls