Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

6o CRITICISM AND CREATION. [ll.
discredited, but is more than ever in demand. So far
from imagination receding, like the Red Indian, before
the advance of criticism and civilisation, the truth is
that expanding knowledge opens ever new fields for its
operation. Just as we see the produce of our coal and
iron mines used nowadays for a hundred industries, to
which no one dreamt of applying them a century ago,
so imagination enters to-day into all our knowledge, in
ways undreamt of till now. More and more it is felt that,
till the fire of imagination has passed over our knowledge,
and brought it into contact with heart and spirit, it is
not really living knowledge, but only dead material.
You say perhaps, if imagination is now employed in
almost every field of knowledge, does any remain over
to express itself in poetry or metrical language ? is any
place left for what we used to know as poetry proper —
thought metrically expressed ? I grant that the old
limits between prose and poetry tend to disappear. If
poetry be the highest, most impassioned thoughts con-
veyed in the most perfect melody of words, we have
many prose writers who, when at their best, are truly
poets. Every one will recall passages of Jeremy Taylor's
writings, which are, in the truest sense, not oratory, but
poetry. Again, of how many in our time is this true ?
You can all lay your finger on splendid descriptions of
nature by Mr, Ruskin, which leave all sober prose behind,
and flood the soul with imagery and music like the
finest poetry.