english grammar

THE APPRECIATION OF POETRY What is poetry?; Though many have tried to define poetry, no one has succeeded in giving a satisfactory definition of it. Poetry seems to elude all attempts to describe it. Yet we should know something about poetry, and learn to cultivate our feeling for it, so that we may gradually come to recognize it, and know when it is present. The best we can do is to point out some essential characteristics of true poetry. Before we discuss these essential characteristics, let us try and understand the connection between poetry and verse. Verse is the form of poetry. Poets generally (but not always) write their poetry in verse-form. But there is a lot of verse written which is no poetry at all. Verse is the body, and the poetry is the soul; and body without a soul is a dead body. We shall understand this better as we go on. Verse is usually printed in a particular way, so that you can tell it from prose at a glance. But it is the ear, not the eye, which i...