Let me not dare to attempt the definition of poetry, nor answer the question what it is. Like religion, love, nature, while those terms are indispensable, and we all give a sufficiently accurate meaning to them, in my opinion no definition that has ever been made sufficiently encloses the name poetry.
The poetic area is very spacious—has so many mansions—has room for all—
An ensemble with measureless varieties, adopting countless samples and elements from all lands, all ages,
Limitless, subtle, refusing to be tabulated, needing comparisons and contrasts,
Evolutionary, and ready at any time for themes, standards, previously unknown.
Nor can any rule or convention ever so absolutely obtain but some great exception may arise and disregard and overturn it. Literature in its deepest sense defies measurement, rules, standards; all genius defies the rules—makes its own passage—is its own precedent. Every really new person (poet or other) makes his style—sometimes a little way removed from the previous models—sometimes very far removed.
A poem must each time be a new discovery—not seem old, stale, made. How much more agreeable to me is the conversation or writing that does not take hard paved tracks, the usual and stereotyped, but has little peculiarities and even kinks of its own, making its genuineness—its vitality.
It is the very worst sort of logic to try a poem by rules of logic—to try to confirm a round world by square tests—to sit down and argue a poem out, out, out, to an end—yes, to death.
The play of imagination, with the sensuous objects of nature for symbols, and faith—with love and pride as the unseen impetus and moving-power of all—make up the curious chess-game of a poem. All that defines the road between conceivable objects and the human spirit, and explains what those objects mean, is poetry, coarse or fine.
The points of union and rapport among all the poems and poets of the world, however wide their separations of time and place and theme, are much more numerous and weighty than the points of contrast.
The verse of all tongues and ages, all forms, all subjects, really combine in one aggregate and electric globe or universe, with all its numberless parts and radiations held together by a common centre or verteber—in its entirety the dominant moral factor of humanity’s progress.
The great idea—that, O my brethren, that is the mission of poets. In all times and in all nations it has been the faith of poets to believe in the noblest thoughts and deeds and to express them, with always the background of the eternal moralities.
In this is the common glory of poets irrespective of period or place; in this we inherit and partake of everyone without distinction of place; in this the good of anyone is the good of all.
A great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for all degrees and complexions, and all departments and sects,
The words of true poems are the general light and dark—
Divine instinct, breadth of vision, the law of reason, health, rudeness of body, withdrawnness, gayety, suntan, air-sweetness—such are some of the words—
They balance ranks, colors, races, creeds, and the sexes.
The highest poetic expression demands a certain element of the religious, indeed should be transfused with it. And the religious element, the most important of any, seems to me more indebted to poetry than to all other means and influences combined. In a very profound sense religion is the poetry of humanity, and neither could exist without the other.
A poetry worthy the immortal soul of man, while absorbing materials and the shows of nature, will, above all, have a freeing, fluidizing, expanding, religious character, exulting with science, fructifying the moral elements, and stimulating aspirations and meditations on the unknown.
Such poems only—in which the religious tone, the consciousness of mystery, the recognition of the future, of the unknown, of Deity over and under all, and of the divine purpose, are never absent, but indirectly give tone to all—exhibit literature’s real heights and elevations, towering up like the great mountains of the earth.
In all pure poetic work there must especially come in a primal quality, not to be mentioned, named, described, but always felt when present: the direct off-throwing of nature, parting the ways between formal, conventional, borrowed expression and the fervor of genuine spirit.
The poets are divine mediums,
Through them come spirits and materials to all the people, men and women—
The spirit of life in visible forms,
The spirit of the seed growing out of the ground,
The spirit of the resistless motion of the globe.
I want for poetry the clear sun shining, and fresh air blowing,
The strength and power of health, not of delirium, even amid the stormiest passions.
Our visions, the visions of poets, are the most solid announcements of any,
For we support all, fuse all,
After the rest is done and gone, we remain,
There is no final reliance but on us,
All this time and at all times wait the words of true poems,
Words as solid as timbers, stone, iron, brick, glass, planks.
The words of true poems do not merely please,
There cannot be a true poem unless it satisfies the various needs of beauty;
In all times and in all nations it has been the faith of the poet to diffuse the love of beauty,
Words exude in power and beauty from him,
A clear nameless beauty pervading and overarching all the work of his pen.
Everything is beautiful in itself and perfect,
The office of the poet is to remove what stands in the way of our perceiving the beauty and the perfection;
The best poetry is simply that which has the perfectest beauty—
Beauty to the ear, beauty to the brain, beauty to the heart, beauty to the time and place.
The true poets are not followers of beauty but the august masters of beauty,
The words of the true poems do not seek beauty, they are sought,
Forever touching them or close upon them follows beauty, longing, fain, love-sick.
Who has projected beautiful words through the longest time?
By God! I will outvie him!
I will say such words, they shall stretch through longer time!
Give me to speak beautiful words! take all the rest.
But the final test of poems, or any character or work, remains: Has it help’d any human soul? How far can it elevate, enlarge, purify, deepen, and make happy the attributes of body and soul?
The profoundest service that poems or any other writings can do for their reader is not merely to satisfy the intellect, or supply something polish’d and interesting, nor even to depict great passions or persons or events, but to leave men healthy, to fill them with a new atmosphere—with vigorous and clean manliness, religiousness—and give them good heart as a radical possession and habit.
A writer can do nothing for men more necessary, satisfying, than just simply to reveal to them the infinite possibilities of their own souls. There are qualities—latent forces—in all men which need to be shaken up into life. To shake them up—that is the function of the writer—to nourish with joy the pride and completion of man in himself.
This poetry, or aliment of the soul, we must have. It is clamored for with the most irresistible longing, for we are greedy of this sort of diet. I have never so much cared to feed the esthetic or intellectual palates—but if I could arouse from its slumbers that eligibility in every soul for its own true exercise! If I could only wield that lever!
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In the Words of Walt Whitman 