Why do we so often find men in these days, either using metre ... where they ought to have expressed themselves in prose, or expressing themselves in verse in a style so far remote from the standard of diction established in society that they fail to touch the heart? I think the explanation of this curious phenomenon is that, though metre can only properly be used for the expression of universal ideas, there is in modern society an eccentric or monastic principle at work, which leads men to pervert metre into a luxurious instrument for the expression of merely private ideas. (WILLIAM JOHN COURTHOPE: _Life in Poetry, Law in Taste_, pp. 71-83.) Language is colloquial and declarative in our ordinary speech, and on its legs for common use and movement. Only when it takes wings does it become poetry. As the poet, touched by emotion, rises to enthusiasm and imaginative power or skill, his speech grows _rhythmic_, and thus puts on the attribute that distinguishes it from every other mode of artistic expression--the guild-mark which, rightly considered, establishes the nature of the thing itself.... Our new empiricism, following where intuition leads the way, comprehends the function of _vibrations_: it perceives that every movement of matter, seized upon by universal force, is _vibratory_; that vibrations, and nothing else, convey through the body the look and voice of nature to the soul; that thus alone can one incarnate individuality address its fellow; that, to use old Bunyan's imagery, these vibrations knock at the ear-gate, and are visible to the eye-gate, and are sentient at the gates of touch of the living temple. The word describing their action is in evidence; they "thrill" the body, they thrill the soul, both of which respond with subjective, interblending vibrations, according to the keys, the wave-lengths, of their excitants. Thus it is absolutely true that what Buxton Forman calls "idealized language,"--that is, speech which is imaginative and rhythmical,--goes with emotional thought; and that words exert a mysterious and potent influence, thus chosen and assorted, beyond their normal meanings....