CHAPTER CONTENTS CONTRIBUTORS TO THE FUND. I. THE DIVINE POET: THE INTER- PAGE ii VIRGIL AND HIS HIS MEANING ΤΟ THE WORLD OF TO-DAY P I. THE DIVINE POET OETRY is, technically, human speech wrought by art into musical utterance; vitally, it is the interpretation of life in its highest terms. The progress or process of poetry is its movement through the ages, not only from poet to poet, but from country to country, from race to race, from language to language. In each, it is the expression, in patterns of words, of the instinct and effort of mankind to discover, to disengage, and to fix the essential truth and beauty which underlie the confused appearances of life. Its function is, in the words of Shelley," to lift the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and make familiar objects be as if they were not familiar ": or, in the equally penetrating phrase of a living poet, "to condense out of the flying vapours of the world an image of perfection." |