$2 The Study of Poetry
the main current and texture of occupations and endeavours,
of private pursuits or public interests.
Each alike suffers from the divorce that is between them.
A democracy which excludes or ignores poetry cuts itself off
from one of the main sources of vital strength and national
greatness. A poetry which is out of sympathy with democ-
racy is thereby out of touch with actual life. But the future
that lies before both is splendid, if both will work in har-
mony, if national life is inspired and sustained by poetry,
and poetry takes nothing less than that life for its province,
gives it a heightened meaning, brings out from it the latent
patterns of beauty after which it blindly but unceasingly
aspires. Poetry, as Dryden said of it, is articulate music:
the music to which life moves, and in which it finds its dis-
cords resolved.
Such is the task and function of the poets. But the study
of poetry is not for poets alone, any more than the study of
colour and form is confined to painters, or the study of music
to composers. The appeal of art is universal. The in-
heritance of the present age is not merely the present, but
the whole past as well. Of that inheritance, the great poetry
of the world, from Homer downwards, is the most precious
portion. It preserves for us, still alive and still having
power to move and kindle, the best of what mankind has
thought and felt, the most perfect forms into which it has
cast its vision and reflection, its emotion and aspiration. And
thus the study of poetry is part of democratic education; and
the poetry of democracy, kindled by that study and appeal-
ing to a nation educated in it, will be the articulate music of
national life.
John William Mackail.