290 The Future Poetry
poetic mind is called to elevate itself and which is original and
native to its manner of expression. The degree of word-force
characteristic of prose speech avails ordinarily to distinguish
and state things to the conceptual intelligence; the word of the
poet sees and presents in its body and image to a subtle visual
perception in the mind awakened by an inner rhythmic audition
truth of soul and thought experience and truth of sense and life,
the spiritual and living actuality of idea and object. The prosaist
may bring to his aid more or less of the seeing power, the poet
dilute his vision with intellectual observation and statement,
but the fundamental difference remains that ordinary speech
proceeds from and appeals to the conceiving intelligence while
it is the seeing mind that is the master of poetic utterance.
This seeing speech has itself, however, different grades of its
power of vision and expression of vision. The first and simplest
power is limited to a clear poetic adequacy and at its lowest
difficult to distinguish from prose statement except by its more
compact and vivid force of presentation and the subtle difference
made by the rhythm which brings in a living appeal and adds
something of an emotional and sensational nearness to what
would otherwise be little more than an intellectual expression;
but in a higher and much finer clarity this manner has the power
to make us not only conceive adequately, but see the object or
idea in a certain temperate lucidity of vision. The difference can
best be illustrated by an example of each kind taken at random,
one from Dryden,
Whate’er he did was done with so much ease,
In him alone ’twas natural to please: —and the other from Wordsworth,
The waves beside them danced, but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay
In such a jocund company.