What then is to be said of the following sentence of the critic quoted
before: "But when any one who knows what poetry is reads--
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence,
he sees that, quite independently of the meaning, ... there is one note
added to the articulate music of the world--a note that never will leave
off resounding till the eternal silence itself gulfs it?" I must think
that the writer is deceiving himself. For I could quite understand his
enthusiasm, if it were an enthusiasm for the music of the meaning; but
as for the music, "quite independently of the meaning," so far as I can
hear it thus (and I doubt if any one who knows English can quite do so),
I find it gives some pleasure, but only a trifling pleasure. And indeed
I venture to doubt whether, considered as mere sound, the words are at
all exceptionally beautiful, as Virgil's line certainly is.
When poetry answers to its idea and is purely or almost purely poetic,
we find the identity of form and content; and the degree of purity
attained may be tested by the degree in which we feel it hopeless to
convey the effect of a poem or passage in any form but its own.
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